


•• «* 



P C» » 






^0 X 



<^ *«T 



;• .*r 






<i» ** * SlfcS • "to <£ •J 









iV^ 







- >^ 






: A * 



><*, 










V * W\^ ^ ^ -w^o* ^ ♦ 










*W 











p°-^ v 






\yy?K\^ %.*^^-' 






^^ v .' 









^^ v • 







.*..•!.•. ."% 







.Ho* 





i -^ V 






V* 




^ .& 
%.«* 







t p* 




j>°^>. v 




V '-''.^ 






p -*. 



VA, 



^v -.^ji^: ^^ -.war: «>^ 






c^^n 



^ e j> v-. v «r/-* 



* aV ^ 



. * ' * « ^O <^ % a o - « „ <& A^ . ^ ' • * *^0 v^ c " ° « 






^v* %.''f" 4 \&* ^o*^?^*^ *\.°*'»-''*- 

V^Pv* %/^v 5 v^y°%. 



K** &*+ ''SK&* ^\. ^^wr* ^\ "•Xi 



r. ^-o* 






'by" 









to. %■ ^ /jfe*- %>,/ -M'. ^. /♦'«. 















- w - 
W* y % • 












7 " c>^ 






YOUE ANSWEK 

—OR— 

YOUR LIFE, 

— OR — 

The Riddle Propounded by the Amer- 
ican Sphinx. 






MOSES HULL, 

AUTHOR OF "THE QUESTION SETTLED," "THE CONTRAST 
BETWEEN EVANGELICALISM AND SPIRITUALISM," " WHICH, 
SPIRITUALISM OR CHRISTIANITY?" "JOAN, THE HEROINE 
OP ORLEANS," "THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT," "THE 
DECAY OF INSTITUTIONS," "BIBLICAL AND MODERN 
MEDIUMSHIP," AND SEVERAL OTHER WORKS ON REFORM- 
ATORY SUBJECTS. 




DES MOINES, IOWA 
MOSES HULL A CO. 






Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1888, 

By Moses Hull & Company, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



/7-37<?3 




MOSES HULL. 



. PKEFACE. 



"A penny for your thoughts," rang out upon 
the air one cool morning as I walked, in profound 
meditation, supposing myself to be entirely alone. 
" They would this morning fill a dozen issues of the 
Chicago Times" was my response. "If I could 
only be turned wrong side out, and my thoughts 
could be known and read of all men as they force 
themselves upon my own attention, I would have 
some hope for our country, but, alas!" — "O, yes, I 
know what you are going to say; the drouth, yes, 
it's rather hard on Kansas farmers, but we'll pull 
through somehow." "No," said I, "I was think- 
ing of those innocent men who are to be legally 
murdered next week because of the sins of the peo- 
ple. This is not our first act of injustice, I won- 
der if it is not nearly the last one. As surely as 



Sodom and Gomorrah were to rise in judgment 
against the cities of Judea, so sure must the old 
monarchies rise in judgment against our govern- 
ment." The conversation thus sprung upon me 
culminated in several long talks, in each of which 
I was urged, as was one of old, to "write the vision 
and make it plain upon tables that he may run that 
readethit." Hab. ii:2. 

There is little that is original in this book, I have 
striven simply to point out some of the dangers we 
are under, and to signify the way of escape. If 
this brochure shall open a few pair of eyes and set 
a few men and women to pointing out the way and 
all to fleeing from "The City of Destruction," I 
shall be glad ; if not, I shall at least have the sat- 
isfaction of knowing I did all in my power to show 
America her danger. 

Moses Hull. 

Des Moines, Iowa, June 1, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I.— THE EISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 

A wonder of the world.— Dimensions of the Sphinx.— Its Riddle.— A 
supposed answer.— Suicide of nations.— Egypt's former civilization. 
— "Cleopatra's Needles." — Poinpey's pillar. — Monolith atMemnon. 
—The Pyramids.— Why has Egypt's civilization fallen?— Zoroaster's 
morals.— Board of Trade.— Why she died.— What made Rome great? 
—Why did she f all?— Eloquent sermon. —Historical facts, pp . . 9-18 

CHAPTER H.— IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. 

How greed kills .— Prophets. — Lincoln's fears. —Steven's warning. — 
Webster at Bunker Hill. — A great country.— landlordism in Amer- 
ica. — Vanderbilt's wealth.— Gen. Weaver's calculation. — Other rich 
men.— Statement from Kansas. — A Bishop on the situation. — Our 
debts and our wealth. — Testimonies from- Spencer, Jefferson and 
Webster.— Judge Black's testimony. — Objection and reply. — Gem 
from Henry George, pp 19-31. 

CHAPTER HI.— DO THE PEOPLE RULE? 

Ignorance the bane of Republics.— Stupidity and cupidity should be 
disfranchised. — Bulldozing. — A monopolist's speech. — The effect. — 
Advise from the Boston Herald. — How elections are conducted— A 
riddle to be solved. — A senator on the question. — What the Wallace 
Committee found.— Law of R. I. — Col. Moran's testimony.— Daniel 
O'Donovan testifies. — Eloquent words from Mr.Willey. — An ex- 
Member of Congress disfranchised.— Committee's gloomy report. — 
Shall we give up so? pp 31-40. 

CHAPTER IV.— WHAT IS THE PRESS DOING* 

Jesus against lawyers.— Why the Jews lost their Polity. — Power of the 
press. — Press and pulpit contrasted. — Importance of integrity. — 
How the press murdered four men.— A "Boston Herald" report. — 
It's correction. — Thurber's testimony. — Senator Windom on the 
question.— Scathing rebuke from a journalist, .pp 4047. 

CHAPTER V.— DANGER SIGNALS. 

Designs of corporations.— The Mode of making a nation of task- 
masters and serfs. — Work of the Evangelical alliance. — A senator's 
position. — What the press has said. — Danger signal hoisted by Lin- 
coln.— "The Dictator" and "The Imperialist."— An editor's testimo- 
ny. — Intentions of a candidate for the presidency. — Queen Victo- 
ria's opinion of Grant. — The British system favored.— Let us put a 
lookout aloft, pp 47-55 . 

vn 



CHAPTEB VL— DO MONOPOLIES CONTEOL GOVEBNMENT? 

Government surrenders to the Banks.— "What the money power ob- 
tained. — Our debt not caused by the war. — What charters do. — 
Contrary to the Declaration of Independence.— How corporations 
monopolize.— Railroads stronger than Congress.— Testimony of a 
Senate Committee. — Apathy, our chief danger. — Gowen's testimo- 
ny.— Jay Gould's testimony.— Capitalistic secret societies.— Gould, 
a chameleon.— Senator Davis' testimony.— Railroads bribing a leg- 
islature.— Eloquent words from Hon. F. 0. Willey. pp 55-64. 

CHAPTER VII.— HAVE WE A REPUBLIC? 

No republic yet— A start made in 1776.— What would a true republic 
do?— Why the effort to save New York. —How conventions are man- 
aged. —Why dark horses are trotted out.— How minorities elect.— 
How minorities could be represented.— Signs of "her birth-strug- 
gles."— Why no republic under present conditions.— Co-operation 
vs. competition.— Moral progress, a desideratum.— Heath on the re- 
public. — Dr.lShellhouse on the situation. —What is needed.— The ed- 
ucation not needed.— Political education needed.— How newspapers 
and post-masters suppress facts.— Universal distribution of legisla- 
tive records. — The Hayne-Webster debate.— The effect this would 
have on Congress.— Abolition of the appointing power.— An an- 
cient writer on the subject, pp 64-77. 

CHAPTER Vm. — WHERE IS THE REMEDY? 

No use for a president.— The Russian bear. —Other Government bears. 
—Where the veto power should be.— Cost of the president.— The 
lobby and the president.— The effect.— Effect on Congress of the 
referendum. — Effect on the people.— A sample case.— A soldier's 
thought.— Mr. Shellhouse's statement.— A demand of the K. of L.— 
Government loans.— The power of Congress.— To whom shall it be 
delegated.— Result of Congress doing its duty, pp 77-85. 

CHAPTER IX.— WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE SENATE? 

Our Senate not Republican. — The "check" argument answered. — 
—The legal tender act.— Of whom is the Senate composed?— The 
California Senate.— Good bills pigeon-holed.— Tenant farmers the 
result.— Our Sphinx's question, pp 85-&8. 

CHAPTER X.— OUR JUDICIARY SYSTEM. 

Courts not for the poor. —Beecher's testimony.— Technicalities^. jus- 
tice—Efforts to keep truth out of courts.— "Swear as I tell you."— 
An Attorney on the 'situation.— Missionaries wanted— Our jury sys- 
tem.— A lawyer on the situation.— Demoralizing influence of courts. 
— Not Republican. — Swinton on the lawyer. —Arbitration, pp.88-96 

CHAPTER XI.— CONCLUSION. 

Object of writing.— Have we a right to save ourselves?— Results of 
attempting to point out a better way.— What the Declaration says.— 
Have monoplies rights here?— Tyranny not easily conquered. —Now 
is the time to work.— "What constitutes a State?"— An ideal Re- 
public. — It must come. 



CHAPTEK I. 

THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 

A WONDER OF THE WORLD. — DIMENSIONS OF THE SPHINX. 

ITS KIDDLE. — A SUPPOSED ANSWER. — SUICIDE OF NATIONS. 
— EVIDENCES OF EGYPT'S FORMER CIVILIZATION. — "CLEO- 
PATRA'S NEEDLES." — POMPEY'S PILLAR. — MONOLITH AT 
MEMNON. — THE PYRAMIDS. — WHY HAS EGYPT'S CIVILIZA- 
TION FALLEN? — ZOROASTER MORALS. — THE FIRST BOARD 
OF TRADE. — WHY SHE DIED. — ROME. — WHAT MADE HER 
GREAT ? — WHY DID SHE FALL? — EXTRACT FROM AN ELO- 
QUENT SERMON. — HISTORICAL FACTS. — CONCLUSION. 

If the reader of these pages wishes to see fully 
illustrated the evidences that nations fall and go in- 
to desolation, let him take a trip on the Nile, the 
only river in Egypt, from Alexandria to Ipsamboul. 
There he will at once see the evidences of a former 
grandeur not seen elsewhere in the world, and of a 
present desolation so sickening, at least, as to stimu- 
late in him feelings akin to those so grandly ex- 
pressed by the eloquent M. Yolney, when journey- 
ing among its desolations. 

Across from Cairo, a comparatively modern city, 

one hundred and thirty -five miles up the Nile, and a 

little back from the river, stands one of the wonders 

of the world. It is a huge stone sculptured out in 

9 



10 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

the likeness of a lion and a woman; that is, it is a 
lion's body with a woman's head. This monolith, 
with its wide-open eyes, has, it is supposed by some, 
stood there over fifteen thousand years, not only to 
watch the passers-by, but to watch the birth, growth, 
old age and death of nations. It is itself, an evidence 
of a huge, barbaric civilization of an hundred cent- 
uries in the past. It stands seventy-five feet up in 
the air; its huge body lies one hundred and forty 
feet on the ground, with itspaws extending fifty feet 
in front, thus making it one hundred and ninety 
feet in length. This monster is called the Egyptian 
Sphinx; tradition gives as the reason why it was 
called "the sphinx," which is merely the Greek word 
for "strangler," a habit it had of propounding a rid- 
dle, to all who came that way, and its other and worse 
habit of strangling to death all who could not solve 
its riddle. 

May there not in this, as in most mythological 
tales, be a shading of truth? I have somewhere 
seen this interpretation. The question, or riddle 
propounded by the Egyptian Sphinx was: "How can 
you maintain your present civilization?" Could 
the question have been properly answered, Egypt 
could have continued all she ever was, and her glory 
would not only have covered the valley of the E"ile, 
from Nubia to the Mediterranean, but would have 
extended until its law would have put new life into 



THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 11 

all other nations, and no decay of nations would 
ever have been known. Be that as it may, nations 
are not born to live ont a puny, sickly, short exist- 
ence, and then die of premature old age. The his- 
tory of dead nations proves them generally to have 
committed suicide. No especial providence ever 
yet killed a nation or a person. 

It is hardly within my present province to give 
an extended history of Egypt's former greatness 
and present desolation; yet, a few words may show 
from what heights a nation may fall. 

The river Nile, by its slow process, has, in some 
places, deposited seventy-five feet of earth over some 
of the evidences of that country's gigantic civiliza- 
tion. At that depth pottery has been found care- 
fully laid away by the dish-washers of over an hun- 
dred centuries ago. There has been discovered evi- 
dences that way back in pre-historic times, the in- 
habitants of the Nile valley could harden copper so 
hard that it would shave a piece of the hardest steel 
with the comparative ease with which one whittles 
a piece of castile soap with a butcher knife. In 
those days glass was made as malleable as iron is 
to-day. Astronomical and philosophical instruments 
show that an astonishing amount of wisdom had 
been accumulated in that direction. 

At Alexandria once stood the same Cleopatra's Nee- 
dles, one of which now stands in Central Park, New 



12 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

York; the other on the Thames. One of the great- 
est feats of modern engineering was to get those great 
monuments from Egypt, the one to London and the 
other to New York, and erect them where they now 
stand; yet the ancient Egyptians, by some means, 
cut those monoliths out of the living rock, and 
moved them by land eight hundred miles, and set 
them up at the mouth of the Nile. 

Cleopatra's IN eedle is a small affair compared with 
Pompey's Pillar, which stands erect to-day, at Al- 
exandria. The world has never before or since seen 
such a single shaft as that. How this huge stone, 
one hundred and fourteen feet high and eleven feet 
in diameter, sixteen feet through the plynth and 
abachus, was brought from the quarries of Syenne 
and erected, is a question which modern engineer- 
ing has asked a thousand times, but never answered. 

The image at Memnon, called the Memnoniam, 
in Thebes surpasses either of the former shafts as 
Niagra surpasses a brooklet. This huge monster, 
"the beloved of Ammon," carved in the shape of a 
man, once stood erect, guarding the entrance to the 
temple of Memnon. It is over ninety feet high, 
the ear is three feet long; it is twenty-two feet from 
the knee to the plant of the boot and is estimated to 
weigh thirty thousand tons. How was it removed 
to Thebes? How set up? How thrown down? 

The huge Pyramid of Cheops, covering thirteen 



THE EISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 13 

and a half acres and extending four hundred and 
eighty feet in the air is another monument of the 
power and intelligence of the people of fifteen thou- 
sand years ago, as is proved by the precession of 
the equinoxes. The eye in the center of this huge 
pile of stones, looking at the north star, tells very 
definitely when it was builded, and gives some- 
thing of an idea of the knowledge of astronomy in 
that early age of the world. 

Translations from the hieroglyphics, on their tem- 
ples and tombs, show something of the moral status 
of that ancient people. Why should such civili- 
zation crumble into the dust? It is said that nations, 
as men, are born to grow, to thrive, to dwindle, to 
decay, and finally to die. This statement is based 
on observation; but is there any necessity for na- 
tions dying? Why should nations die? Nay, is 
not their death, in most cases, suicide? 

I have read the history of the downfall of no na- 
tion, that did not die of its own follies and sins. 
God never killed a nation. Moses told Israel if 
they would be obedient they should "eat the fat of 
the land;" otherwise, they should be destroyed. 

Who has not heard of the crimes against the pro- 
ducing classes committed in that giant gamblers' 
den, known as the "Board of Trade," in America, 
but turn back to Egypt and view there the seed 
out of which all such institutions have grown. Zo- 



14 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

roaster, the Persian Moses, who lived as far back, at 
least, as the days when the Hebrew Moses led his 
brothers and sisters out of Egypt, seemed to have a 
foresight that such gamblers' nests as Boards of 
Trade would be hatched out, so he said : 

"Who ever buys grain when it is cheap and holds it 
from the people to make it dear, commits the worst of 
all sins, for he commits the sin that leads to all others." 

He was right, star ation and the impossibility of 
getting the wherewiui to supply the wants of a 
hungry wife and children will lead loving and true 
husbands and fathers into all manner of crime. 
The sin, in such cases, lies at the door of gamblers, 
known as " speculators." 

In Egypt the Board of Trade was born, and out 
of that Board of Trade was hatched the swarm of 
crimes which causes Egypt to-day to keep a per- 
petual Sabbath, from Ipsamboul to Alexandria. 
Three thousand years ago an Israelite proposed to 
the reigning monarch to corner all the corn there 
was in Egypt; be it remembered, corn is a generic 
term, and signifies grain. This struck Pharaoh 
as being a good move. So when he got the grain 
"cornered," the people who raised it came to this 
Board of Trade, and paid in money, such prices as 
were demanded. Soon, however, their money was 
gone, then what was to be done? They were in- 
formed that they could bring their cattle [chattels] 



THE EISE AND FALL OF NATION'S. 15 

and trade thein for grain. This source of revenue 
was also soon exhausted, and they were then told 
that the supply of grain had not run out, they 
could have grain for their lands. 

When their land and everything else had passed 
into the hands of these robbers, the people could do 
nothing else than sell themselves for something to 
eat. 

Thus, the Board of Trade very soon cornered all the 
wealth of the country, insomuch that three per cent, 
of Egypt's citizens owned ninety -seven per cent, of 
her wealth, leaving ninety -seven per cent, of her cit- 
izens with but three per cent, of her wealth. The un- 
equal distribution of her wealth, like the unequal cir- 
culation of blood through the human system, caused 
apoplexy, from which she, though the richest coun- 
try on earth, never recovered. 

The history of Egypt is our example; could we 
learn from the things she has suffered, we might 
be saved from a similar fate. 

What I have said of Egypt is equally true of 
Rome. She was once the grandest and most demo<- 
cratic nation on the earth. Her wealth was distrib- 
uted among the multitude, and, of course, her peo- 
ple were happy. The land was divided among the 
millions. Her greatest warriors and greatest sena- 
tors were still greater farmers. Eighty -five per cent, 
of the population were land-owners, and felt that 



16 TOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

they had something to fight for, and were therefore 
the most invincible soldiers the world had ever seen. 
ISTeibhur, the great German historian, says: 

"To what, more than to her system of colonization, 
a branch of her agrarian scheme, was she [Rome] in- 
debted for the security and extention of her frontier? 
A host of warriors were trained up ready to take the 
field at the call of their country, yet no less ready to 
exchange the sword for the plowshare. It is not, how- 
ever, in a military point of view that the value of these 
institutions is evident. They were of no less domestic 
importance in providing against the phenomena so fre- 
quently met with in great cities, of the squalid indi- 
gence by the side of the most profuse extravagance." 

Rev. Gilbert De LaMatyr, in one of his sermons, 
uses the following eloquent language: 

"With the history of mighty Rome we are all famil- 
iar. Her iron civilization stands clearly photographed. 
She grasped all that was valuable in the accumulations 
of her predecessors and massed it in her structure, built 
of iron founded on granite. At the zenith of her real 
greatness and power, eighty-five per cent, of her popu- 
lation held titles in lands, and cultivated their own. 
Then her people were happy, prosperous, hardy and 
brave; her legions were invincible. Then her currency 
was, in volume, one thousand eight hundred millions. 
When Rome perished, her lands and wealth were in the 
hands of two thousand individuals. Dr. Lord says: 
'These two thousand persons owned the world.' Her 
currency had been contracted by class legislation to less 
than two hundred millions. Allison says : 'The fall of the 
Roman Empire, so long ascribed to ignorance, slavery, 
heathenism, and moral corruption, was really brought 
about by a decline in the gold and silver mines of Spain 
and Greece.' " 

The German historian, from whom we before 
quoted, says: 



THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 17 

"The people gave themselves up in despair in the 
fields, as beasts of burden lie down beneath their load 
and refuse to rise. The disintegration of society was 
almost complete. All public spirit, all generous emo- 
tions, all noble aspirations of man shriveled and disap- 
peared as the volume of money shrank, and prices fell. 
As men decayed, wealth accumulated in the hands of 
the few. Not only did whole provinces become the 
property of one man, but usury existed in so frightful 
a form that even the virtuous Brutus received sixty per 
cent, for the use of money." 

Pliny says: 

"These colossal fortunes which ruined Italy, were 
due to the concentration of estates through usury, so 
scarce was money." 

This partof the subject might be pursued further, 
but I will content myself with, making one more 
quotation from Allison. 

"Rome," says this great historian, "fell, because the 
slaves became so numeious, and the proprietors so be- 
sotted that none were left to withstand the incursions 
of the barbarians, except nobles, too effeminate and 
cowardly to defend their property, and slaves, who had 
nothing to defend." 

This is true. Men will rally to defend their 
homes and their firesides, while but few are willing 
to volunteer, or even when drafted, to fight with 
much earnestness for that which belongs to a mas- 
ter, or for only a bed of straw in a tenement house. 

"Why did Egypt become decrepit and die? Why 
did Home fall? The answer is plain. They both 
committed suicide by enslaving and killing the 
masses of their workingmen. 



18 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

The late lamented Col. Heath, in a newspaper 
article, truthfully and eloquently said: 

"Egypt died when ninety-seven per cent, of her wealth 
became centered in three per cent, of her population. 

"Babylon's fall was caused by ninety-eight pe>* cent, 
of her wealth centering in two per cent, of her people. 

"Persia, the empire of 'an hundred and seven and 
twenty provinces,' kicked the bucket when one per cent, 
of her population had gobbled up the wealth of the 
realm. 

"Greece, with more tenacity, succumbed to apoplexy 
when less than one per cent, of her wealth was distrib- 
uted among ninety-nine per cent, of her people. 

"Rome gave up the ghost when two thousand of her 
nobles owned the world. 

"In the American Republic the wealth producers own 
less than ten per cent, of what they have created, and 
already the Goddess of Liberty begins to show the pre- 
monitory symptoms of a fatal congestion." 

The above is all true. These things are "an en- 
sample unto us." Shall we examine the wrecks oth- 
er nations have been compelled to pile up, and avoid 
the rocks on which they have gone to pieces? As 
sure as like causes produce like effects, so sure we are 
in danger. Let us learn by the experience of others. 



CHAPTEE II. 



IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. 

SOW GREED KILLS. — PROPHETS.— LINCOLN'S FEARS. — STE- 
VEN'S NOTE OF WARNING. — WEBSTER AT BUNKER HILL. — 
A GREAT COUNTRY. — ENGLISH LANDLORDISM IN AMERICA. 
— VANDERBILT WORTH MORE THAN ALL CHICAGO. — GEN. 
WEAVER'S CALCULATION. — OTHER RICH MEN. — STATEMENT 
FROM KANSAS. — A METHODIST BISHOP ON THE SITUATION. 
— OUR INDEBTEDNESS AND OUR WEALTH. — TESTIMONIES 

FROM HERBERT SPENCER, JEFFERSON AND WEBSTER. 

JUDGE BLACK'S TESTIMONY — AN OBJECTION AND REPLY. — 
GEM FROM HENRY GEORGE. 

Thus far, our attention has been called to other 
governments. We have seen how their cupidity 
has strangled them to death. Avarice generally over- 
reaches itself and dies from its own hand. If suicide 
was its first work it would be well, but it is not. Av- 
arice destroys all within its reach before it destroys 
itself. 

In every age of the world there seems to have been 
here and there a mind which towered above its fel- 
lows, as Mount Washington in New Hampshire, or 
Mount Hermon in Palestine, tower above the little 
hills by which they are surrounded. Such have 
seemed gifted with a spirit of prophecy and have 



20 TOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

warned their fellow beings of the breakers ahead. 

Abraham Lincoln, as the light of the brighter world, 

on the border of which he was standing, seemed to 

penetrate through the dark clouds of war, raised 

his prophetic voice, "as the voice of one crying in the 

wilderness," and said: 

"Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this 
cruel war is nearing a close. It has cost a vast amount 
of blood and treasure. The best blood of the flower of 
American youth has been freely offered upon our coun- 
try's altar that the nation might live. It has been in- 
deed a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the 
near future, a crisis approaching that unnerves me, 
and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. 
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned 
and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and 
the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong 
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, 
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the 
Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anx- 
iety for the safety of my country than ever before, even 
in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions 
may prove groundless." 

Great heavens, what a prophet! How truly did 
the then on-coming events cast their shadows on the 
far-reaching mind of the man, who, in a few days, 
was to fall a martyr to the power which tried to ruin 
the country. A more gigantic power j ust being born 
caused him more "anxiety for the safety of his coun- , 
try," than did the war which was waged on purpose 
to overthrow it. 

This brings to my mind the words of another dy- 
ing old saint. Thaddeus Stevens, that grand old 



IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. 21 

commoner from Pennsylvania, after he saw "the 
hand- writing on the wall," arose from his dying bed, 
I seem to see him now, as he stands in his place in 
the congressional chamber, leaning on his cane, hat 
in hand, and his overcoat over his arm, ready to 
leave the assembly's hall, and go back to the bed 
from which he had just arisen on purpose to bear 
a kind of dying testimony. His words are: 

"There is no great prospect that we shall return to 
the system I have indicated, nor do much to protect 
the people from their own eager speculations. When, 
a few years hence, the people shall have been brought 
to general bankruptcy by their unregulated enterprise, 
I shall have the satisfaction to know that I attempted 
to prevent it." 

Eloquent and prophetic words! Yes, honest old 
Thaddeus, your skirts are clear, you did your duty. 
Alas ! the sheep failed to recognize the voice of the 
shepherd, and drank to the dregs, the cup prepared 
by their own "unregulated enterprise." 

The people of this country concluded they would 
erect a granite monument which should tell all fut- 
ure generations of the struggles our fathers had, to 
give us liberty; they went to Bunker Hill, or rath- 
er, Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Mass., and erected 
a "granite finger, pointing heavenward." They 
called upon Massachusetts' great senator, Daniel 
Webster, to deliver the dedicatory address. In that 
address he hir.ted that American liberty was yet in 
danger, not from foreign foes, but from "foes with- 



22 YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

in." Have we the power to stand against ourselves, 
was, as it is now, the great question. In that speech, 
Mr. Webster said: 

"Liberty cannot long endure in any country where 
the tendency of legislation is to concentrate wealth in 
the hands of a few." 

These three texts are not from three "Anarchists," 
"Communists," or "fire-eaters." They do not come 
from those who strive to make "labor discontented," 
and "invested capital uneasy." They are from three 
of the greatest statesmen the world ever saw. They 
were old, when the present crisis was forced upon 
the American people; they are "the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness," and should be studied — 
prayerfully studied. 

"We are in a great country. A New England 
writer compares our American Republic to a "sleep- 
ing giant," whose head lies pillowed on the eternal 
snows of the North, his feet among the perennial 
flowers of the South, while, with his left hand he 
grasps the rising sun, and with his right hand, the 
setting sun. 

We have, in round numbers, four millions of 
square miles of territory, possessing every variety 
of soil and climate. All the minerals of earth are 
here; our lakes, rivers and forests are unequaled. 
One of ovlv forty states is larger than England, Scot- 
land, Wales, Belgium, Holland and Portugal. Near- 



IN THEIR FOOT STEPS. 23 

ly all Europe could be taken out of Texas. Truly, we 
have all the latent resources of wealth we could ask. 
There is enough and to spare. These latent resources 
are being developed, too, but, "the tendency of leg- 
islation is to concentrate the wealth in the hands of 
a few." 

How is it in New York to-day? I have seen the 
statement that three per cent, of the inhabitants of 
the city, own it; the other ninety -seven per cent, 
are, in a sense, paupers. It is said that less than 
one hundred and fifty men own Ireland. That is 
a bad state of affairs, but nineteen men in England 
own more land in America than all Ireland; thus 
British landlordism is destined to be more potent 
for evil here than in the land of primogenitureship. 
By these and other means, the wealth of America 
is passing into the hands of a few men, and some 
of these men alien landlords. It is said that our 
William EL Yanderbilt died worth two hundred and 
twenty-two millions of dollars. To get something 
of an idea of that vast wealth, let it be stated that 
at that same time, Chicago, with its over half-mil- 
lion of people, had not that much assessable property. 
Chicago, with all its real estate, all its buildings, all 
its goods and chattels of all kinds, in the year 1879, 1 
believe, was only assessed at two hundred and sev- 
enteen millions of dollars. How did Yanderbilt 
acquire all this wealth? Did he earn it? No; I this 



24 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

day saw a calculation, made by my friend, Gen. 
Weaver, which showed that if Adam had lived un- 
til to-day, and had laid by one dollar every day, he 
would not yet have one hundred million dollars. 
That if he had come into existence six hundred 
thousand years ago, instead of six thousand years 
ago, and laid by one dollar every day, he would not 
yet have wealth equal to that left by William H. 
Yanderbilt. Of course, then, it is evident that Yan- 
derbilt did not earn his wealth, but somebody earned 
it and Yanderbilt got it. People begin to under- 
stand this and it occasions much dissatisfaction. 

Now, Yanderbilt was only one of the immensely 
wealthy men of the country; the Goulds, the Scotts, 
the Garrets, the Huntiugtons, the Stanfords, and 
others were and are rapidly following on, while the 
millions are becoming poorer every day. May not 
this great increase of wealth on the part of these 
men be one cause of the increase of poverty on the 
part of others? While writing this a Kansas ex- 
change, Ohetojpa Statesman, comes to hand, mak- 
ing the following exhibit of the condition of Labette 
Co., Kan., as shown by the records of the county: 

"Land mortgages $6,500,000 

Interest past due and unpaid 200,000 

Railroad and other bonds 600,000 

Chattel mortgages personal security 700,000 

Unsecured debts 1,000,000 

"Grand Total $9,000,000. 



IN THEIK FOOTSTEPS. 25 

"Leaving out the unsecured debts, the rest of. it is 
drawing interest all the way from 6 to 30 per cent. At 
a safe estimate, the yearly interest exceeds $700,000. 

"This enormous aggregate indebtedness spread over 
the land of the county (and it ultimately devolves upon 
the farms to pay all debts) would amount to $300 for 
every man, woman and child in the county. 

"This is certainly a staggering exhibit. It is an ap- 
palling fact. And it can neither be forgotten nor pooh- 
poohed out of the way. 

"Under the present financial condition of the country 
the payment of this debt is simply and utterly impossible. 

"It is only a question of time when three out of every 
four mortgages will be foreclosed — when three-fourths 
of the farmers in this county will be turned out of their 
homes — unless there is a speedy change in financial leg- 
islation." 

It is but justice to say that Labette County is 
no worse off than half the other counties of Kansas. 
While in Kansas not long since, I was shown the 
records of Phillips County and partial records of 
other counties which were quite as startling as the 
record quoted above. 

In the light of the above facts who wonders that 
the late Methodist Bishop, Dr. Peck, saw the inev- 
itable result, and tearfully said: 

"At the beginning the conviction must be profound 
and pervading that a great reform is imperatively de- 
manded. I take it that the great revolution which has 
just revealed itself is the concentration of the general 
feeling that in some way reform, must come. Agitation 
and conflict are inevitable! This is no child's play! It 
will be the attempt of moral principles to assault and 
break down the power of untold consolidated millions 
of money, to challenge and defy the most enormous 
class interests, which ever trampled upon a free people. 
It will be the most terrific conflict ever known on this 
continent." 



26 YOUR ANSWER OB YOUR LIFE. 

This man has hit the case exactly; the battle is 
to be one between moral principle on the one hand 
and consolidated millions on the other. If princi- 
ples gain in this conflict, the sun of ourKepublic is 
just beginning to rise; if consolidated and corporate 
wealth gain this battle, then, indeed, our end has 
come; greed will choke itself to death. 

Our National, State, Municipal, Corporate, and 
Individual debts to-day, have been estimated to 
amount to sixteen thousand million dollars. One 
man, a member of Congress, said on the floor of the 
House, they were over twenty thousand millions. 
The interest will average as much as six per cent. 
The total increase of wealth in the country is not 
over three and a half per cent, Now add three and 
a half per cent, on forty-five thousand millions the 
county is receiving, and deduct six per cent, on 
twenty thousand millions we are paying and you 
will readily determine how much there will be left 
with which to feed, clothe and provide homes for 
sixty millions of people. This represents our Re- 
public as a Republic of paupers on the one hand and 
of robbers on the other. Such a Republic cannot 
stand. Herbert Spencer rightly said : 

"The republican form of government is the highest 
form, but, because of this, it requires the highest type 
of human nature— a type no where at present existing. 
We have not grown up to it, nor have you." 

I fear Mr. Spencer is correct, especially in that 



IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. 27 

last sentence. " We [Englishmen] have not grown 
up to it, nor have you [Americans]. 

Thomas Jefferson regarded the people, the "com- 
mon people," as being all right ; he feared the wealthy 
classes only. He said: 

"I am not among those who fear the people; they 
and not the rich are our dependence for continued free- 
dom." 

Daniel Webster told us : 

"The great interest of this country — the producing 
eause of its prosperity is labor! labor] labor! The 
government was made to encourage and protect this in- 
dustry and to give it security." 

Has the government done, and is it doing what 
Massachusetts' great statesman said it was organized 
to do? Let the late Judge Black answer the ques- 
tion. 

"The actual consequences resulting to the country 
from the measures of the monopolists, have not, I think, 
been truly represented, or properly considered. For 
many years all legislation has been partial to capital- 
ists, and correspondingly injurious to the rights of 
land and labor. To what pernicious extent this system 
has been carried I need not say, for it is seen and known 
of all men. It cannot and will not come to good. * * 
* But for every millionaire, they have made a thou- 
sand paupers. The relations between workingmen and 
employers have never been so unsatisfactory as now. 
Laborers are complaining everywhere of inadequate 
wages; and the complaiut is true, without doubt. The 
law ought to secure them a living rate of compensation; 
but capital has got labor by the throat, and will not 
suffer anything done for its relief. * * * If we es- 
timate the prosperity of a country only by the overgrown 
fortunes of individuals especially favored by law, then 



28 YOUK ANSWEK OR YOUR LIFE. 

Ireland is prosperous, as well as America; for there, as 
here, the legal machinery is in perfect order, which 
makes the rich richer, while it grinds the poor down to 
deeper poverty; and there, as here, the lines of Gold- 
Smith are ever true and ever wise: 

'Hard fares the state, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.' " 

It is objected that the state of affairs hinted at 
in the foregoing cannot obtain in America. I re- 
member of delivering a lecture on these subjects; 
at its close a gentleman came to me and said: "Mr. 
Hull, you make out a case, but then it is all in your 
eye; great fortunes may be made in America in a 
single life-time; but it is only for a life-time; what 
the father makes and hordes up the sons will scat- 
ter. To bring about the state of things you fear, 
we must have the laws of entail, of primogeniture- 
ship, and must have dukedoms, baronies and lord- 
ships. Those never can obtain in America." 

Were it not for the fact that this man was osten- 
sibly wrong, at first sight one might incline to think he 
was correct. Upon second thought one can see that 
all these wants are supplied under one word, and 
that is corporation. Corporations which never die 
and consequently need no heirs, have more than tak- 
en the place of lords, dukes, earls and barons of the 
old countries. 

Coal and water, to-day provides physical force 
with which muscles of flesh cannot compete; thus, 
labor becomes a "drug in the market." The never- 



IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. 29 

dying corporation harnesses the steam horse to his 
machinery, and uses the lightning as his errand 
boys. The store-houses of nature are tapped and 
their goods are forced into the market. Who can 
compete with them ? These dukes and barons own 
about all the surplus land of America, and the 
"children" whose "bread" was wrongfully given to 
and retained by these "dogs," are forced to starve 
in the streets. 

These institutions, known as corporations, are a 
new class of individuals, a class not known in our 
constitution; but this individual is possessed of a 
thousand times the greed and avarice of any for- 
eign lord. Unless our Constitution is remodeled so 
as to take this person in and make him subject to 
the people, he will soon scuttle that document and 
overthrow American civilization. 

Can we bring this new person, monopoly, to terms? 
Can we make him one of us? Can we instil into him 
the elements of brotherhood? If so, we have in- 
deed a glorious future. Poverty would be abolished, 
want would be destroyed and glorious achievements 
accomplished. Henry George pictures the state of 
affairs which would then ensue, as follows: 

"With want destroyed; with greed changed to noblo 
passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality 
taking the place of jealousy and fear that array men 
against each other; with mental power loosened by con- 
ditions that gives to the humblest, comfort and leisure 



30 YOUR ANSWER OB YOUR LIFE. 

and who shall measure the heights to which our civili- 
zation may soar? "Words fail the thought! It is the 
golden age of which poets have sung and high-raised 
seers have told in metaphor. It is the glorious vision 
which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful 
splendor." 

How grand the idea above expressed! and who 
shall say it is more grand than true? Remove pov- 
erty and the fear of poverty, and avarice is forever 
gone. Greed then will no longer drive men to rob- 
bery and theft. The life of the higher faculties will 
then be called into play, and 

"Sword and spear of needless worth 
Shall prune the tree and plow the earth." 



CHAPTEE III. 

DO THE PEOPLE RULE? 



IGNORANCE THE BANE OF REPUBLICS. — STUPIDITY AND CUPID- 
ITY SHOULD BE DISFRANCHISED. — BULLDOZING. — A MO- 
NOPOLIST'S SPEECH.— THE EFFECT. — ADVICE FROM THE 
BOSTON HERALD. — HOW ELECTIONS ARE CONDUCTED IN 
PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK. — ONE OF THE RIDDLES TO 

BE SOLVED. A SENATOR ON THE QUESTION. — WHAT THE 

WALLACE COMMITTEE FOUND. — LAW OF RHODE ISLAND. 

COL. MORAN'S TESTIMONY. — DANIEL O'DONOVAN TESTI- 
FIES. — ELOQUENT WORDS FROM HON. F. O. WILLEY. — AN 
EX-MEMBER OF CONGRESS DISFRANCHISED. — COMMITTEE'S 
GLOOMY REPORT. — SHALL WE GIVE UP SO? 

Abraham Lincoln defined a Eepnblic to be a gov- 
ernment of the people, for the people, and by the 
people. In this he was right; nothing less can be 
called democratic republicanism. "With intelli- 
gence and integrity to guarantee such a government, 
Republics are demanded and are the only true form 
of government, but without both intelligence and 
integrity we had better be under a czar in Russia, 
or a sultan in Turkey than in a Republic. A re- 
publican form of government can only be good in 
the hands of honest and wise citizens. Ignorance 
blindfolds the voters and is as liable to lead to hell, 



32 YOUR ANSWER OK YOUR LIFE. 

as anywhere; and a lack of integrity will lead the 
voter and drive the government in any direction 
demagogues may point. Once a gentleman re- 
marked to me, after hearing me talk: "You are 
right, but I never should vote that way; when I go 
to the polls I go there to win, and your theories 
never can win." Why not? because men either lack 
intelligence to comprehend the truth, or, compre- 
hending it, lack the honor to go to the polls and ex- 
press their own opinions. In either case, such peo- 
ple should be disfranchised; why should stupidity 
or cupidity be privileged to vote away the liberties 
of sixty millions of people? If such people had 
only their own destiny in their hands, it would be 
but little matter; but in this country all are, unfor- 
tunately, in the hands of knaves and imbeciles, pro- 
vided they are in the majority. 

But with all the wisdom and honor in the world, 
things are so manipulated here that the people can- 
not rule. Bulldozing, as it is called, is almost the 
rule, and not the exception. Where there is a law 
against bulldozing, those who seek to control the 
elections always tind a way to violate it without be- 
ing held guilty. I remember, in the year 1878, I 
think it was, when General Butler was running for 
Governor of Massachusetts, one of the proprietors 
of cotton mills at Holyoke, called his hands togeth- 
er on Friday afternoon before the election on the 



DO THE PEOPLE RULE 8 



33 



next Tuesday, and spoke, in substance, as follows: 
"Next Tuesday is election; your employers would 
not, if they could, dictate how any of you shall vote; 
we want you to go to the polls, if you choose, and 
vote as you choose; but, this corporation has con- 
cluded, if the present party continues in power, to 
continue to run these mills, and do all it can for 
those in its employ ; but if General Butler is elected, 
we have concluded to shut down, and not a spindle 
shall turn while he is Governor of this State. His 
administration will so disturb the relation of things 
as they now exist, that we will do no business as 
long as he is governor." 

This came to me at first hand, from a member 
who was called in to hear that speech. Said he, 
fully three-fourths of us had made up our minds to 
vote for Butler, but when we found we were voting 
ourselves out of employment, and voting bread out 
of our children's mouths — when we realized that a 
long and cold winter was just ahead of us, we saw 
that it would not do. Two out of about three hun- 
dred of us were rash enough to vote for Butler and 
take our chances as to the result. The rest argued, 
• we will, if we vote for Butler, elect him or we will 
not; if we elect him, we have voted ourselves out 
of employment; if we do not our vote has done no 
good; the result was, they either stayed at home or 
voted for the opposition candidate. 



34 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

This was a kind of bulldozing that the law could 
not touch, still it was effectual. In such cases the 
question at the head of this chapter is a jprojpos. 
Do the people rule? 

The above mentioned firm and a thousand others 
in the Old Bay State, may have taken their cue from 
an editorial in the Boston Herald, of which the fol- 
lowing is an extract: 

"They [the capitalists] know that idle hands are wait- 
ing: to do tbeir work. It is not to be expected that they 
will look on indifferently, and see their employers 
vote for a destructive like Butler. Human nature is 
much the same in Massachusetts and Mississippi, only 
methods are different. Brain, capital and enterprise 
will tell in any community. It is very improper, of 
course, to intimidate voters. But there is a way of giv- 
ing advice that is quite convincing." 

The North, on the eve of every general election, 
hears much about bulldozing in the South; the 
South probably hears as much about it in the North; 
if not, it is simply because it is slow in gathering 
facts. The story of elections in Philadelphia and 
New York is told in the respective papers of these 
cities plainly enough to open the eyes of those who 
are verdant enough to think the people have some 
voice in governmental affairs. The history of elec- 
tions in Cincinnati, and in Chicago, if written true 
to the facts in the case, would be on a par with the 
cities mentioned in the following extracts. The 
first is from the Public Ledger, a republican paper 



DO THE PEOPLE RULE? 35 

of the republican city of Philadelphia. Here it is, 
slightly abridged: 

"The whole fabric of Philadelphia election affairs is 
permeated and undermined by fraud. * * * It 
[the election] begins with myths on the registry lists ; it 
is carried on by hired gangs of 'rounders,' 'repeaters' 
and 'personators' who vote, not only for false names on 
the lists, but the true names of persons who have died, 
moved away, cr are absent from home. They even vote 
the names of persons who are at home, and who, on 
reaching the polls, find themselves shut out." 

The New York Post quotes the above, and com- 
ments on it as follows: 

"Rascality knows no political distinctions. A knav.i 
will as readily assume republican as democratic patri- 
otism. * * * New York has been governed by a 
democratic machine, Philadelphia has been governed 
by a republican machine. There is no working differ- 
ence between the two machines." 

Comment seems needless; our government is to- 
day in the hands of a gang of pirates, who, if they 
cannot run it in their own interest, will attempt to 
scuttle it. One of the riddles propounded by the 
American Sphinx to-day is : How can you rescue your 
so-called Republic from the hands of the Shylocks 
and the political prostitutes — professional politicians 
— and deliver it into the hands of the people? The 
life of republicanism and of civilization in America 
depends on our ability to solve that among other 
problems. 

A United States Senator has been lauded to the 
skies for saying: 



36 TOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

"We Deed a stronger government; the wealth of the 
country demands it. * * * The wealth of the coun- 
try has to bear the burdens of the government and shall 
control it." 

This is the principle now almost universally act- 
ed upon. The "Wallace Committee, appointed in 
1879, to investigate bulldozing in the United States, 
found the rich bullying the poor into voting their 
tickets, not only in the South, but in all the New 
England States; in New York, New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They found on the 
statute books of Rhode Island, a law from which 
the following is an abridged extract: 

"The following classes of persons have a right * * 
* to vote in the election of all civil officers, and on all 
questions, in all legally organized town, ward or district 
meetings. Every native male citizen, * * * who shall 
show by legal proof that he has * * * paid a tax 
upon his property, in the town where he shall offer to 
vote, valued at least at one hundred and thirty-four 
dollars. 

"Second. Every male citizen * * * who is truly 
and really possessed in his own right, of real estate in 
such town or city, of the value of one hundred dollars^ 
over and above all incumbrances, or which shall rent 
for seven dollars per annum over and above any rent re- 
served or the interest on any incumbiance thereon." 

Under this law the poor man in Rhode Island is 
effectually disfranchised. Senator Sharon could, in 
this State, at least, realize his determination that 
"capital shall control the government." The Wal- 
lace Committee took many testimonies on the work- 
ing of this law in Rhode Island. 



DO THE PEOPLE RULE? 37 

The following is an abridgment of Col. James 
Moran's testimony: 

"Live here — lived here twenty-eight years. * * * 
Entered the service of the United States from Rhode 
Island. * * * Held an election for officials in Rhode 
Island in his company, in the army, but could not vote 
himself. Was a voter once, because he once owned real 
estate; has lost it and cannot vote now." 

This poor fellow was good enough to go and 
light to save his country, but could not vote for its 
officers — that privilege, in his State, belongs to the 
real estate owners. 

Daniel O 'Donovan testified before the Committee 
as follows: 

"Ten of us work together in one room in our factory; 
the highest grade room in it; six of the ten cannot vote 
for want of land." 

On this point, Hon. F. O. Willey, to whom I am 
indebted for many extracts in this chapter, says : 

"The mechanics of Rhode Island have woven some of 
the finest fabrics that beautify the ladies' toilet; they 
clothe her millionaires in fine raiment ; they have decked 
her hills with palaces, in which their masters walk on 
velvet carpets, and sleep on beds of down; they have 
cleft granite from her quarries and filled her valleys 
with factories and made them vocal with the hum of in- 
dustry; they have pierced her hills, and sent the en- 
gine whizzing through her mountains and across her 
fields; they have built her temples of worship and her 
ships that sail the sea, yea, and spun the cable that 
spans old ocean. Yet, unless they happen to own land 
they cannot vote; they have created her wealth and 
built up her material prosperity, but must leave it to 
others to control her political destiny." 



38 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

The testimony of Hon. Thomas Davis is as im- 
portant as any yet presented. Here it is: 

"Live in Providence; * * * seventy-five years old; 
a manufacturing jeweler; been in both branches of the 
Legislature a number of times; member of Congress 
from Rhode Island in 1853-4, then owned real estate; I 
am not now a qualified voter; I failed in business, 
and the title of my property passed to my assignees, 
and I cannot now vote; wealth controls suffrage in 
Rhode Island; money is all-powerful here — it can over- 
whelm public sentiment at any time here; have been 
both a Republican and a Democrat, but nave always 
advocated the repeal of the restriction." 

I might follow this with other evidence until the 
heart would grow sick, but I will not; suffice it, 
that the Wallace Committee found legal and illegal 
restrictions in every State visited. The most hu- 
miliating part of the whole is that they were com- 
pelled to report to the Senate as follows : 

"Your committee was instructed to inquire and re- 
port whether it is within the competency of Congress 
to provide by additional legislation for the more per- 
fect right of suffrage to citizens of the United States in 
all the States of the Union. They have performed that 
duty, and whilst they find that improper practices, as 
herein before detailed, exist in the States visited, and 
the freedom of choice by voters in those States has been 
interfered with and persons practically threatened with 
dismissal from employment, if they voted in opposition 
to the wishes of their employers, yet they cannot find 
that it is within the competency of Congress to correct 
this wrong by additional or any legislation" 

This settles the question; if this committee is 

right in its report, the people do not rule. Our 

liberties are at an end. The question of our own 



DO THE -PEOPLE-RULE? 39 

Sphinx cannot be answered, and our civilization 
must die. How the hearts^pf those who have boasted 
of our civilization must sink when they contem- 
plate the fact that our republican institutions have 
produced giant enemies of republicanism too strong 
for congressional legislation to control! 

We are not willing to give it up so; we believe 
there is virtue yet with the people. Still other 
dangers threaten us, which must be considered in 
after chapters, after which we hope to be able to 
point the way out. 



OHAPTEK IY. 

WHAT IS THE PRESS DOING? 



JIBUS* CHARGE AGAINST LAWYERS. — WHY THE JEWS LOST THEIR 

POLITY. THE POWER OF THE PRESS. — PRESS AND PULPIT 

CONTRASTED. — IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRITY. — HOW THE 
PRESS MURDERED FOUR MEN. — A "BOSTON HERALD" RE- 
PORT. — IT RELUCTANTLY MAKES A CORRECTION. — MR. 
THURBER'S TESTIMONY. — SENATOR WINDOM ON THE QUES- 
TION. — SCATHING REBUKE FROM A JOURNALIST. 

Of all the charges that Jesus made against the 
pharisees, and particularly the lawyers of his time, 
*probably the most heinous one was that made in 
Luke xi:52, that they had "taken away the key of 
knowledge." The pharisees, to whom this charge 
in Matt, xxiii, applies, pretended to be the especial 
conservators of knowledge; and the lawyers, to 
whom the charge applies in Luke, xi, had been ed- 
ucated by especial provision, on purpose to read 
and expound the law to the multitude. The mul- 
titude was compelled to go from Sabbath to Sabbath 
on purpose to listen and thus learn what the law was. 

It appears that these pharisaic lawyers took ad- 
vantage of the occasion to make their position con- 

40 



WHAT THE PKESS IS DOING. 41 

tribute to the ignorance instead of the knowledge 
of the multitude. They gave the multitude what 
they chose to have them know, and nothing more. 
Thus, they were just what Jesus calls them; "blind 
guides" — "blind leaders of the blind" into the 
ditch. The Jews lost their polity through the wil- 
ful ignorance and perversity of their lawyers. 

Jesus foresaw the state of affairs their course 
would bring, hence he said: 

"Woe unto you, ye lawyers! for ye have taken away 
the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, 
and them that were entering ye hindered." 

The daily and weekly newspaper has, in this 
country become the great educator of the people. 
The pulpit has largely lost its power; not half, in 
our large cities — not one-fifth of the people go to 
church; the minister, if he would, cannot reach 
them. Again, if he could reach them, he only has 
access to their ears an hour at a time once a week ; 
but the omnipresent and ubiquitous newspaper pen- 
etrates all the dark corners of our Republic and pro- 
vides the theme and gives direction to the thought 
of the civilized world. This being true, press and 
type have become the lever and fulcrum which 
moves the world of thought. 

The world is indebted to the press to-day for 
much of its knowledge, and for the most of its fut- 
ure progress; how important then that intelligence 



42 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

and integrity be placed at its helm. When the 
press neglects its duty, or when, through misrep- 
resentation and falsehood, it gives impetus to the 
wrong set of thoughts, or sets men to thinking in 
the wrong direction, it not only takes away the key 
of knowledge, but becomes an immense engine to 
force falsehood, and consequent destruction to the 
front. 

Two cases occur to my mind now, which serve to 
illustrate my point. In the trial of the four men 
recently murdered in Chicago, under the guise of 
law, there is no doubt in the world but the news- 
papers, in obedience to monopolistic capitalists, com- 
mitted the murder. They worked up public senti- 
ment, so that as the high priest, Caiaphas, said: 

"It is expedient for us that one man [seven men 
should die for the people." 

In that trial, newspaper reporters swore that they 
went to anarchistic meetings under instructions to 
make their reports as unfavorable to the anarchists 
as possible, thus to create a sentiment against them 
that would lead to murder. This would please the 
capitalists and give the newspapers a much larger 
sale. 

A labor reform convention was once held in the 
lity of Boston, which I did not attend. The Boston 
Herald reported that the profane and blasphemous 
Moses Hull was there, and in his speech uttered such 



WHAT THE PRESS IS DOING. 43 

profanities and vulgarities as would have driven a 
decent audience out of the hall. In its report of 
the evening session, it said: "At this time Moses 
Hull again took the stand and proceeded to swear 
and blackguard the audience out of the hall." 

I went to the Herald and told it there must he 
some mistake in the matter, as I had not been at 
the convention. The city editor responded: ""Well, 
as you are a very profane man, you are not much 
injured if the report is not true." I said: "As I 
never swore an oath in my life, I am injured ; I ask 
you to take back what you have said, and if you do 
not, 1 will try my hand in a libel suit." He said: 
"It shall be taken back, Mr. Hull." The next day 
the paper said: 

"Moses Hull called at the Herald office yesterday, 
and requests us to say that he did not swear as much in 
the recent labor convention as our report represented." 

I went back to the office and said: "You have 
lied again. Once more I ask you to take it back — 
to state that I was not at the convention; that I am 
not a blackguard nor a profane man. I will not 
call again. The next time you hear from me it will 
be through General Butler." The next day the 
Herald said: 

"The Herald reporter was mistaken. Moses Hull 
did not attend the convention where he was represented 

as swearing profanely. The swearing was done by 

,who can swear enough for a wnole labor reform 

convention." 



4:4 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

The Herald boasted of a circulation of about 
ninety -seven thousand; see what a power for mis- 
chief when misdirected. It may not be out of 
place for me to say here, this was the last attempt 
of the Boston Herald to slander me. 

Mr. Thurber, president of the Anti-Monopoly 
League, writes as follows: 

"On the twenty-seventh day of January, 1880, Mr. 
Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and 
Reading Railroad, in an argument before the Commit- 
tee on Commerce of the House of Representatives of 
the United States, in Washington, stated: 

'I have heard the counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 
standing in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, threaten that court 
with the displeasure of his clients if It decided against them, and all 
the blood in my body tingled with shame at the humiliating spectacle.' 

In the Associated Press reports this ivas suppressed, 
and only when the argument ivas published by Mr. 
Gowen was this remarkable statement verified to those 
who heard it" 

This shows how totally the Associated Press is in 
the hands of railroad and other corporations. They 
simply give to the world that portion of the news 
they want it to have — no more. Is this fair? Is it 
honest? Can the world be truly enlightened by such 
a press? I fear not. 

When I took my pen to write this chapter I had 
only one thing in my mind; that was to reply to 
the question so frequently asked: "If what you 
have stated concerning bulldozing and preventing 
people from expressing their honest opinions at the 
polls is true, why have we heard so little of it? 



WHAT THE PRESS IS DOING. 45 

Why does the press say nothing? To this there is 
but one answer; the press is subsidized, controlled 
almost wholly by the monopolistic, bulldozing cor-^ 
porations, and therefore either says nothing, or seeks 
to whitewash such operations. 

Senator Windom, of Minnesota, in a letter to the 
Anti-Monopoly League, said: 

"The capitalists have bought and are buying largely 
the Associated Press, and are controlling largely the 
avenues of intelligence." 

Could I bring the matter within the limits allot- 
ted to this chapter, I could bring a hundred illustra- 
tive cases bearing on this point. 

I repeat, the press of America has become the 
toadying tool of monopolists, and should we lose 
our republicanism and our civilization, the press, 
which could, if it would, enlighten the public, will 
be largely to blame. 

Once upon a time the press got up an annual ex- 
cursion; when it reached New York, a great dinner 
was provided for it. At this feast a leading New 
York journalist was called upon to respond to the 
toast, "The Independent Press." For a long time 
he refused to speak, but after much persuasion, and 
observing that he was talking to and for the press, 
and not for the world, he said: 

"There is no such thing in America as an independ- 
ent press, unless it is out in the country towns. You 
are all slaves. You know it and I know it. There is 



46 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LITE. 

not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. 
If you express it, you would know before hand that it 
would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred 
and fifty dollars for keeping honest opinions out of the 
paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid 
similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should 
allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my 
paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours my occu- 
pation would be gone. The man who would be so fool- 
ish as to write honest opinions would be out on the 
street hunting for another job. The business of a New 
York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, 
to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, 
and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, 
or for what is about the same thing, his salary. You 
know this and I know it; and what foolery to be toast- 
ing an "Independent Press." We are the tools and 
the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are 
jumping- jacks. They pull the string and we dance. 
Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all 
the property of other men. We are intellectual pros- 
titutes." 

Great heavens! What an arraignment! and the 
worst feature of it is, the most severe things here 
said are true. The press, which could save the coun- 
try, is leading the way to the city of destruction. 



CHAPTER V. 

m 

DANGER SIGNALS. 

DESIGNS OF CAPITALISTS AND CORPORATIONS.— THE MODUS 
OPERANDI OF MAKING A NATION OF TASK MASTERS AND 
SERFS. — WORK OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. — A LATE 
SENATOR'S POSITION. — WHAT THE PRESS HAS SAID. — DAN- 
GER SIGNAL HOISTED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN. "THE DIC- 
TATOR" AND "THE IMPERIALIST." AN EDITOR'S TESTIMO- 
NY. INTENTIONS OF A PROMINENT CANDIDATE FOR THE 

PRESIDENCY. — QUEEN VICTORIA'S OPINION OF GRANT. — A 
PRESIDENT FAVORS THE BRITISH SYSTEM. — LET US PUT A 
LOOKOUT ALOFT. 

It is the evident design of capitalists and corpor- 
ations to bring oar Republic to an end. It is hard 
to control the multitude so long as they have a vote; 
but deprive them of their right to express an opin- 
ion at the ballot box and the country is then in the 
hands of corporations; laboring men become at once 
a race of plebeians and will soon be relegated to a 
position analagous to that occupied by the slaves 
of a former generation. 

It could hardly be expected that the first move 

in this direction would be to urge that a republican 

form of government must come to an end. That 

would be disfranchising the whole nation at once; 

47 



48 YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

the first move will be to make certain ones help to 
take the rights of citizens from the balance; when 
the example has been set by disfranchising one class, 
that can be pointed to as a precedent and the task 
of making this a nation of task-masters on one hand 
and of serfs on the other will be comparatively easy. 

A convention of the Evangelical Alliance in Wash- 
ington, D. C, Dec. 8, 1887, urged that the common 
laborer must be disfranchised and others prevented 
from landing in this country. Let that succeed and 
the next move will be to disfranchise the mechanic; 
next, the liberties of the farmer will go, and so on 
until America becomes a paradise of millionaires 
and a slave-pen of paupers. 

The late Senator Sharon in urging that "the 
wealth of the country has to bear the burdens of 
government, and it should control it," only meant 
the disfranchisement of the poor — nothing less. 
He said: 

"The people are being educated up to this theory 
rapjdly, and the sooner this theory is recognized in the 
constitution and laws, the better it will be for the peo- 
ple." 

Of course he foresaw that such a revolution could 

not be precipitated all at once without an immense 

flow of blood, and said : 

' 'Without bloodshed, and rivers of it, there will be 
no political change of administration. * * * To 
avert bloodshed a strong central government should 
be established as soon as possible." 



DANGER SIGNALS. 4:9 

The Indianapolis Daily Journal argued in the 
same strain. It said : 

"There is too much freedom in this country, rather 49 
than too little." 

The Daily JVews, of the same city, said: 

"If the workingmen had no vote, they would be more 
amenable to the teachings of the hard times." 

The Richmond ( Va.,) State, stated the matter 
more plainly. Its words are: 

"There are defects in our institutions which can only 
be remedied by irregular means, and the most defect- 
ive portion of the machinery of our government is the 
elective. The best [that means the most wealthy] must 
govern in every State, and will, regardless of any at- 
tempt to deprive them of that right." 

Though President Lincoln's warning has been 
used in a previous chapter, I dare not leave it out 
here; it serves as a kind of a text for a sermon. In 
his first message to Congress he said: 

"Monarchy is sometimes hinted at as a possible ref- 
uge from the power of the people. In my present 
position I would be scarcely justified were I to omit 
exercising a warning voice against returning despotism. 
There is one point to which I ask attention ; it is the 
effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not 
above labor, in the structure of the government. I bid 
the laboring people beware of surrendering a power 
which they already possess, aud which, when surren- 
dered, will surely be used to close the door of advance- 
ment to such as they, and fix new disabilities and bur- 
dens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost." 

This was written before many of the huge mo- 
nopolies which now crush the life out of the people, 



50 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

were born; yet this grand man, with prophetic eye, 
looked forward and seemed to see the very move- 
ment which now threatens the life of the American 
Republic. He bids us "beware." Of what? "Re- 
turning despotism /" How will it be brought about ? 
By the "placing of capital above labor in the struct- 
ure of the government. Heaven help us to heed 
this warning before it is too late. 

In 1877-8 I had two exchanges on my list ad- 
vocating that republicanism had proved a failure 
and must be superceded by something else; one 
was called The Imperialist; the other, The Dicta- 
tor. I was astonished, as I passed these papers to 
callers in my office, to hear the general sympathy 
there was expressed with the sentiments of these 
papers. 

Whitelaw Reid said in 1874, in the New York 
Tribune: 

"It is astonishing, yea, startling, the extent to which 
the faith prevails, in money circles in New York, that 
we ought to have a monarchy." 

Since Jay Gould has a deed of Whitelaw Reid, 
and owns the New York Tribune, probably it will 
never express astonishment again at the general 
opinion that we ought to have a monarchy. 

There is little doubt but that could Gen. Grant 
have received the nomination and election for the 
third term of the presidency, his inauguration would 



DANGER SIGNALS. 51 

have sounded the tocsin, and liberty, before his 
four years' term would have expired, would have 
been at an end. He had been East studying the 
monarchies of the Old World. Behind this long 
sojourn among the monarchies of the Old World 
lay a motive not apprehended by the multitude. 
When the national convention which it was sup- 
posed would have nominated Grant for a third term 
was over, and Garfield, instead of Grant was nom- 
inated, the Associated Press brought the news that: 

"Queen Victoria is very fond of General Grant and is 
disappointed that he is not nominated." 

The Queen had the description of Grant's tour 
around the world, especially bound for her at an ex- 
pense of $40,00 per set. 

Mr. Willey supposes the General did not win the 
Queen by arguments in behalf of American democ- 
racy — that her fondness for him rather grew out of 
his toadying to her monarchical ideas. 

President Arthur, in his first message to Con- 
gress argued that the British system of office-hold- 
ing should be adopted in this country — that "the 
tenure of office should be for life," and adds: 

"That this system as an entirety has proved very 
successful in Great Britain seems to be generally con- 
ceded even by those who once opposed its adoption. 
To a statute which should incorporate its general feat- 
ures, I should feel bound to give my approval." 

Thus it is demonstrated that we had a president, 



52 TOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

lately who was ready to hand this government over 
as a monarchy if only Congress had asked him to do 
so. I do not say this to speak against the late 
president, for I doubt whether a more honorable 
man has occupied the presidential chair since Abra- 
ham Lincoln. I present it simply as a danger 
signal. There are breakers ahead! If republicanism 
is to be preserved it will be by vigilant watching, 
and a continual lifting up of voices of warning. 
The plans of capitalists and corporations must be 
known by the masses, and checkmated at the polls. 
Let us be vigilant. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DO MONOPOLIES CONTROL GOVERNMENT? 

HOW THE GOVERNMENT SURRENDERED TO THE BANKS. — WHAT 
THE MONEY POWER ASKED AND GOT. — OUR BONDED DEBT 
NOT CAUSED BY THE WAR. — WHAT CHARTERS DO. — CON- 
TRARY TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. — HOW 
CORPORATIONS MONOPOLIZE EVERYTHING. — RAILROADS 
STRONGER THAN CONGRESS. — TESTIMONY OF A SENATE 
COMMITTEE. — APATHY, OUR CHIEF DANGER. — GOWEN'S 
TESTIMONY. — COURTS THREATENED. — JAY GOULD'S TESTI- 
MONY. — CAPITALISTIC SECRET SOCIETIES. — GOULD, ALL 
THINGS TO ALL MEN. — SENATOR DAVIS' TESTIMONY. — 
RAILROADS BRIBING A LEGISLATURE. — ELOQUENT WORDS 
FROM HON. F. O. WILLEY. 

In Republics the people rule. I shall now show 
that in this country the people are ruled by the 
wealthy classes, especially by those possessing in- 
corporated wealth. The facts which occurred in 1879 
and 1880 are sufficient to show our government en- 
tirely under the money power. When the bill was 
up to recharter the National Banks, the banks 
threatened, that if they were not rechartered, they 
would create such a panic as this country never 
saw; the result was, President Hayes hauled the 
stars and stripes down from the masthead and ask- 
ed the bankers what they wanted, and promised it 

to them. The first thing President Garfield did, 

53 



54 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

when he became chief magistrate, a few days after, 
was to run up the white flag; he promised the bank- 
ers that no legislation in this country would receive 
his sanction, which did not suit them. The banks 
must stand though the government falls. 

The money corporations asked the government 
for the bonds, and got them. They asked for the 
bonds to be put on sale at market value, instead of 
far value, and got it : they asked that the interest 
on the bonds be paid in coin, instead of lawful 
money, and got it; they asked that the bonds be 
freed from taxes, and they got it; they asked 
that the bonds be taken back and in their stead new 
ones be issued, principal and interest payable in 
coin, and they got that. All these legislations were 
squarely against the people and in favor of money 
monopolists. Is that republicanism? Does not 
this look as though a single monopoly was control- 
ing an entire department of the government? 

It is generally supposed that our bonded debt 
was created by the war and was to help us out with 
the war, but such was not the case. The war could 
have been fought and every cent of the expense 
paid as we went along without creating any debt. 
The bonds and the banks have cost us more and 
been more disastrous to us, as a people, than the war. 

The Chicago Express, after tabulating all the ex- 
penses of the war and of the bonds, says : 



DO MONOPOLIES CONTROL GOVERNMENT? 55 

"According to this statement, the pay, cost of food 
and clothing of the volunteers amounted to $1,767,064- 
130, while the bondholders to the date of June 30th, 
1879, was $1,764,246,198, and another year's interest 
must be added to find the amount paid to the present 
date. Thus we find that the bondholders were paid 
over fifty millions more for their services than the 
soldiers were paid for theirs. Not only this, but the 
bondholders are to receive back double their principle 
invested — a principle which was loaned in depreciated 
currency to be paid back in gold or its equivalent. 
The soldier's principle of health, of strength, of vigor- 
ous constitution is gone forever, and can never be re- 
paid." 

In another chapter this subject will come up 
again. For the present I pass more directly to the 
subject hinted at in the heading. 

Before showing how corporations are attempting 
to run this government it may not be out of place 
to say a few words on corporations in general. 
Those who think charters give people rights or even 
confer privileges on the corporate bodies are mis- 
taken; that is not their object, their object is to 
take rights from all others. I have a natural right 
to build a railroad where I please, provided I pur- 
chase the right of way of those who own the land 
through which my road runs, and pay all other 
damages caused by my road. A charter does not 
grant me that privilege, it only acts as a prohibi- 
tion against others; my charter deprives you of the 
right to build a road along by the side of mine; 
thus it makes a monopoly of my road. 

The charter itself, is contrary to the spirit of the 



56 YOUR ANSWER OK YOUR LIFE. 

Declaration of Independence. Its language is: 
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal." Is there equality in in- 
vesting one with a legal right to do a piece of work 
and depriving another of the same right? 

The object of incorporating is to give advantage 
to those incorporated. Surely, if no advantage is to 
be gained by incorporating there would be no cor- 
porations. These corporations not only monopo- 
lize the privileges supposed to be granted, and, in 
reality, take from others, but they monopolize the 
best of everything else. They always aim to have 
in their employ the best business men, the best 
lawyers, the best editors and the best inventors 
the country can produce ; they cannot afford to ig- 
nore talent in any direction, and they intend to 
make it hot for the talent that ignores them. A 
writer says : 

"In attracting to themselves the service of the most 
active and vigorous intellects and strongest wills the 
confederate monopolies are doubly entrenched. The 
past history of the world gives no system of oppression 
so insidious, so strong and so all-pervading as that of 
the predatory corporations which are absorbing the 
substance and undermining the liberties of the Ameri- 
can people." 

The above is sufficient to show the power, in any 
given direction, of these corporations. They have 
a monopoly on about all the purchasable talent in 
the country, what is the result? Why, the railroads 



DO MONOPOLIES CONTROL GOVERNMENTS? 57 

are stronger than Congress — the fact is they own 
Congress and they own the commissioners. Yan- 
derbilt declared it would be impossible to appoint 
commissioners who would not either own the rail- 
roads or the railroads would own them. 

Of course if they owned the railroads they would 
work for their own interest ; if the railroads owned 
them they would be manipulated by the roads which 
owned them. 

In 1874, the Senate appointed an especial com- 
mittee on transportation, of which William Win- 
dom, of Minnesota, was chairman. In its report, 
that committee said: 

"In the matter of taxation there are to-day four men, 
representing the four great trunk lines between Chica- 
go and New York, who possess, and ivho, not unfre- 
quently exercise powers which the Congress of the Unit- 
ed States would not venture to exert. They may at any 
time, and for any reason satisfactory to themselves, by 
a single stroke of the pen, reduce the value of property 
in this country by hundreds of millions of dollars. An. 
additional charge of five cents per bushel, on the 
transportation of cereals, would have been equivalent 
to a tax of forty-five millions of dollars on the crop of 
1873. No Congress would dare to exercise so vast a 
power except upon a necessity of the most imperative 
nature, and yet, these gentlemen exercise it whenever 
it suits their supreme will and pleasure, without ex- 
planation or apology." 

Just think of one sentence in the above. "Four 
men * * * can, by a single stroke of the pen, reduce 
the value of property in this country by many hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars." And this statement 



58 YOTJK ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

does not come from a bevy of cranks, but from a 
committee of the United States Senate, selected by 
that body on purpose to gather facts on the subject. 
Does this look as though the country was in the 
hands of monopolists, or does it not? 

More to be dreaded than anything else is the 
nation's apathy. Surely here is the place to "cry 
aloud and spare not," but instead of "lifting up 
their voices like trumpets," and showing the peo- 
ple their sins, they ostracise, vilify and slander 
those whose eyes are open to see the approaching 
danger. "O Lord, open this man's eyes that he 
may see!" 

In a former chapter, in showing up the fact that 
the press was in the hands of rich corporations, I 
quoted Mr. Frank Go wen's testimony. I now re- 
produce that evidence to show the hold these cor- 
porations have on the courts. Mr. Thurber pre- 
sents the testimony as follows: 

"On the twenty-seventh day of January, 1880, Mr. 
Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia &. 
Reading Railroad, in an argument before the Commit- 
tee on Commerce of the House of Representatives of 
the United States, in Washington, stated: 

'I have heard the counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 
standing in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, threaten that court 
with the displeasure of bis clients, if it decides against them, and aD 
the blood in my body tingles with shame at the humiliating spectacle.' 

In the Associated Press reports this was suppressed, 
and only when the argument was published by Mr. 
Gowen, was this remarkable statement verified to those 
who heard it." 



DO MONOPOLIES CONTROL GOVERNMENT? 59 

It has long been known by those who have in- 
vestigated the question, that the legislative de- 
partment of the government was almost hopelessly 
in the hands of corporations; but, never before was 
the Supreme Court of a sovereign State so bull- 
dozed by corporations, through their attorneys. 
Our Supreme Courts are selected from men of the 
most profound learning, — men, if any can be found, 
entirely above suspicion, yet when the counsel of a 
great corporation goes before that body, he makes 
a threat which implies that, like the lower courts, 
legislatures and monopolies, the highest tribunal 
in the land must strive not to gain the displeasure 
of his clients. 

Does that or does it not show a disposition on 
the part of corporations to rule this country ? "When 
the law-making and the law-executing power of 
this country is in their hands where are our liber- 
ties — where is our republicanism? 

Mr. Thurber proves beyond the possibility of 
dispute, that it had been the custom of the Erie 
railroad to control elections by bulldozing voters, 
and by paying, sometimes, more than a million 
dollars per year out of its treasury. 

Jay Gould, the president of the company, was 
one of the witnesses examined; his testimony, ac- 
cording to Mr. Thurbers quotations from Watson's 
testimonies, was, that: 



60 YOUR ANSWER OK TOUR LIFE. 

a He could distinctly recall that he had been in the 
habit of sending money into the numerous districts all 
over the State, either to control nominations or elec- 
tions for Senators, and Members of the Assembly; 
considered as a rule, such investments paid better than 
to wait till men got to Albany, he added the significant 
remark, upon being asked a question, that it would 
be as impossible to specify the numerous instances as it 
would to recall the numerous freight cars sent over the 
road from day to day." 

The report, of which the above is an extract, has 
opened many eyes. Investigations have sprung up 
in other quarters and the result is there is an abund- 
ance of proof that the Erie railroad is not the only 
one that buys its friends into office. I have the 
proof direct from a member of the last Kansas leg- 
islature, that the Santa Fe railroad, elected, direct- 
ly or indirectly, every man it felt it needed in the 
last Legislature. 

This gentleman told me that, to his knowledge, 
there was a secret order at work among capitalists, 
the very existence of which there was an effort to 
keep as a profound secret. The object of this order 
is to control nominations, where necessary, in all 
parties, and always to control elections in the suc- 
cessful party. That the conventions in the politi- 
cal parties are manipulated by monopolists through 
this secret party, without the members of the con- 
vention themselves knowing anything of the power 
behind the throne. Thus we are driven up and 
voted by the grasping monopolists. 



^ 



DO MONOPOLIES CONTKOL GOVERNMENTS? 61 

I must return to Mr. Gould's testimony before 

this committee. He said : 

"I do not know how much I paid towards helping 
friendly men. We had four States to look after, and 
we had to suit our politics to circumstances. In a 
Democratic district I was a Democrat; in a Republi- 
can district I was a Republican, and in a doubtful dis- 
trict I was doubtful ; but in every district, and at all 
times I have been an Erie railroad man." 

The investigation which called this testimony 
from Jay Gould, was rigidly opposed by all the 
leading railroads of New York. Though the rail- 
roads could not entirely suppress the investigations, 
they could and did prevent any legislation in be- 
half of the people as against the railroad corpora- 
tions. 

The late United States Senator, David Davis, a 
man who always spoke, voted and acted on his prin- 
ciples, said: 

' k The rapid growth of corporation power, and the 
malign influence which it exerts, by combination on 
the National and State Legislatures, is a well-ground- 
ed cause of alarm. A struggle is pending, in the near 
future, between this over-grown power, with its vast 
ramifications all over the Union, and a hard grip on 
much of the political machinery, on the one hand, and 
the people in an unorganized condition, on the other, for 
control of the government." 

Mr. Davis was right; a struggle is pending. 

If the people knew it; if the people could see the 

design of these men, there would be no need of 

fear, but alas! many of the people have little time 

or disposition to think. 



62 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

Mr. Thurber, at one time the efficient president 
of the An ti- Monopoly League, sums up an immense 
amount of history in the following: 

"In 1877 the great railroad riots took place, and, at 
Pittsburg a large quantity of railroad and other prop- 
erty was destroyed. The railroad company refused to 
indemnify shippers, but at the same time had bills 
introduced in the Pennsylvania Legislature to make 
the State responsible to them. They employed lobby- 
ists to buy these bills through the legislature, but 
their operations were exposed and William H. Kemble, 
E. Petroff and others, were arrested, tried, and not- 
withstanding extraordinary efforts were made to secure 
their acquittal, were convicted. They immediately 
applied for pardon and were pardoned." 

If I remember correctly, some of them never 
went to prison at all, others were in prison only four 
days. Hon. Freeman O. Willey concludes his ad- 
mirable argument on this subject as follows: 

"The next blood-curdling thought which I would 
have linger in the mind of the reader is, that so far- 
reaching and potent; is the political influence of the 
railroads in this government, that if, perchance, any of 
their agents are found guilty of crime, as in the case of 
Kemble and Petroff, United States Senators can leave 
their places in the Senate, and while drawing pay from 
the people, for their services, can use their time and 
influence to secure the pardon of criminals who have 
bribed the people's representatives, and still retain 
their positions as leaders of a great political organiza- 
tion, that boasts of its morality, patriotism and intelli- 
gence. I would have you remember, also, that the 
Associated Press did not condemn those senators, and 
made eo attempt to strengthen the arm of Palmer and 
Stone, who were standing by the people in refusing to 
pardon the villians who had been poisoning the very 
life-blood of the Republic." 



DO MONOPOLIES CONTROL GOVERNMENTS? 63 

I could give pages of testimony on this case, but 
this is enough. The statements above made show- 
that we, as a nation, are sinking down in the depths 
of sin so deep that the query forces itself upon 
those who read "the signs of the times:" Can we 
save ourselves from ourselves? Heaven help us to 
open our eyes ! 



CHAPTER VII. 



HAVE . WE A REPUBLIC 5 

HO REPUBLIC YET. — A GOOD START MADE IN 1776.— WHAT WOULD 
OBTAIN IN A TRUE REPUBLIC. — WHY THE EFFORT TO SAVE 

NEW YORK. — HOW CONVENTIONS ARE MANIPULATED. 

WHY "DARK HORSES" ARE "TROTTED OUT." — HOW MINORI- 
TIES ELECT. — HOW MINORITIES COULD BE REPRESENTED. 

SIGNS OF "HER BIRTH-STRUGGLES." WHY WE CANNOT 

HAVE A REPUBLIC UNDER THE PRESENT CONDITIONS. — CO- 
OPERATION VS. COMPETITION. — MORAL PROGRESS, A DESID- 
ERATUM. — COL. HEATH ON THE REPUBLIC. — DR. SHELL- 
HOUSE ON THE SITUATION. — WHAT IS NEEDED. — THE KIND 
OF EDUCATION NOT NEEDED. — A POLITICAL EDUCATION 
NEEDED. — HOW NEWSPAPERS AND POSTMASTERS SUPPRESS 
FACTS. — UNIVERSAL DISTRIBUTION OF CONGRESSIONAL 
AND LEGISLATIVE RECORDS. — THE HAYNE-WEBSTER DE- 
BATE. — THE EFFECT THIS WOULD HAVE ON CONGRESS. 

ABOLITION OF THE APPOINTING POWER. — EVILS OF THE AP- 
POINTING POWER. — AN ANCIENT WRITER ON THE SUBJECT. 

The text for this department of my sermon, 

comes from Henry George. 

"The true Republic is not yet here; but her birth- 
struggles must soon begin. Already with the hope of 
her, mens' thoughts are stirring. Not a Republic of 
landlords, and peasants, nor a Republic of millionaires 
and tramps; not a Republic in which some are masters 
and some serve; but a Republic of equal citizens, where 
competition becomes co-operation, and the inter-de- 
pendence of all, gives true independence to each. 
"Where moral progress goes hand in hand with intel- 
lectual progress, and material progress elevates and 
enfranchises even the poorest and weakest and lowliest" 

My first duty is to analyze my text. 



HAVE WE A REPUBLIC? G5 

1. "The true Eepublic is not here." How could 
it be here? Our government was merely an experi- 
ment — an experiment entered into by those who 
had had no experience whatever in conducting gov- 
ernments. Up to this time their whole duty had 
been to obey laws, not to formulate governments. 
It was much the same as it would be for landsmen 
who never saw the ocean, to undertake to run one of 
the Cunard steamers from New York to Liverpool; 
they possibly might get there, but they surely could 
not be considered scientific navigators of the sea. 

Our fathers, with no experience, and with no 
model before them, undertook to formulate a gov- 
ernment. To me the wonder is that they could do 
as well as they did. They made a good start; had 
we, their sons, improved on the model they left us, 
we might to-day live in the enjoyment of a genu- 
ine Republic. 

In a true republican form of government, every 
man, and for that matter every woman, on exactly 
the same conditions, can walk up to the polls and 
vote for the men and women of their choice for all 
the offices in the gift of the people, and there will 
be no other offices, and while minorities would sel- 
dom if ever fail of being represented, majorities 
would rule. 

Such is not the case in this country. We are 

soon to enter upon a political campaign. Who cares 
5 



66 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

for the vote of the State of Iowa, Nebraska or Kansas 
on that occasion ? No one. Why? Because all these 
States are safe for one party, and whether that 
party gets the votes of these States by two hundred 
votes or two hundred thousand, makes no practical 
difference. The vote, not of the people, but of the 
electoral college is what parties are after. Ten 
times as much will be spent to gain the fifty -six 
electoral votes of New York as will be spent in any 
other five States of the Union. Why? Because 
the one who gets these fifty -six votes will be the 
president whether the people of these forty great 
States say so or not. That is not republicanism. 

Even if the people could vote directly for the 
ones they want to fill the offices of president and 
vice president during the next four years, we have 
not even then a republican form of government. 
The majority do not vote for the candidates of their 
choice as they would in a genuine Republic. A 
very small minority shapes the policy of parties, 
brings out their candidates and delivers the voters 
over to the party and to the candidate nominated. 

The history of almost any political convention 
tells the story. Each delegation from each dis- 
trict of each State, goes "instructed." A hundred 
candidates may be before a convention, the parties 
of each swearing that they never will allow any 
body else except their candidate to be nominated, 



IIAVE WE A REPUBLIC? 67 

then all kinds of wire-pulling and intrigues are in- 
augurated and the fight goes on in earnest, until 
one, and sometimes all the candidates are whipped 
Cut of the field. A new one, unthought of before, 
36 brought out and as the bitter partizans cannot 
agree on any of the others, the "dark horse" is nom- 
inated as a spite to all other candidates except ours. 
Thus Hayes and Garfield were both nominated be- 
cause nobody wanted them, and elected because 
people were "whipped in," to vote for candidates 
they did not want. 

When a candidate is orce before the people he 
becomes the candidate of a party, and, good or 
bad he must be lauded by his party, and, good or 
bad, he must be denounced as the worst man on 
earth by those not of his party. 

Again, in this country, majorities seldom elect. 
I remember an election in Massachusetts, in 1876, 
I believe. I was a citizen of that State at that time 
and commented, in my paper, on the circumstance. 
There were eleven men to elect to Congress and there 
were five political parties in the field, each of which 
nominated eleven men. The Republicans nomin- 
ated and elected eleven men, casting less than three- 
sevenths of the entire vote of the State. The Dem- 
ocrats cast two-sevenths of the votes and elected no- 
body; the remaining two-sevenths of the votes were 
divided among Greenbackers, Prohibitionists and 



GS YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

Woman Suffragists. As far as effecting anything 
was concerned over four-sevenths of the votes were 
thrown away. In a republican form of govern- 
ment, if a certain party casts three-sevenths of the 
votes they would have three-sevenths of the offices; 
the others would have their pro rata of offices. If 
such were the case, Congress could never divide up 
into two great parties and every man feel compelled 
to go with his party, right or wrong. Every man 
would be his own party, and we would, as a result, 
have wise legislation. As it is, votes to-day are 
merchantable commodities, both in and out of leg- 
islative bodies. 

2. Mr. George continues: "Her birth-struggles 
must soon begin." So they must, or we are to lose 
the little semblance of republicanism we still claim. 
Men are to-day thoroughly dissatisfied with the 
way things are going. There is a greater inquiry 
into the cause of the evils under which we suffer, 
and this inquiry is educating the masses as never 
before. To-day many common laborers are inves 
tigating questions of political economy; and some 
of them are asking questions their members of Con- 
gress cannot answer. 

Politicians are fearing the people as they never 
did before. The people have a taste of independ- 
ence; they are reading the daily and weekly papers 
and are more inclined to vote independently, and 



HAVE WE A REPUBLIC? 69 

to watch their public servants than they ever were 
in the past. The politician. feels that he is being 
watched and is making more of an effort to cover 
his tracks than he ever did in the past. 

3. "A Republic of equal citizens" — "not of million- 
aires and tramps." 

"With corporations endowed with almost infinite 
power and their lives lasting centuries, it will be 
impossible to maintain a Republic. Under such 
circumstances we are not born equal — one is born 
"with a silver spoon in his mouth," and another is 
born his slave. Under such conditions, the right 
to sin, suffer and starve, are the only rights really 
guaranteed to the masses. Nothing short of a 
Republic of equal citizens can ever be called a Re- 
public; a government which fosters and fattens 
corporations at the expense of its men brings upon 
itself its own doom. A Republic of equal citizens 
cannot be a marts government; it must recognize 
woman's citizenship and her rights as a citizen. 
Until T and my wife can walk to the polls, side by 
side, and each deposit our ballot for the men and 
women of our choice, to fill the offices, we have no 
Republic of equal citizens. 

4. Competition must give place to co-operation. 
Every man must consider every other man his 
brother, and must treat him as such; that will end 
the capital and labor struggle; it will end our tedi- 



70 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

ous and expensive court wars, and every able-bod- 
ied person will earn, and thus insure their own liv- 
ing. Every person will feel his dependence on 
every other, and this grand inter-dependence will, 
indeed, make one family of us. 

5. One thing more will be required to make us 
all we should be: that, Mr. George expresses thus: 

"Where moral progress joins hand in hand with in- 
tellectual progress, and material progress elevates and 
enfranchises even the poorest, and the weakest and the 
lowliest." 

Capital to-day has subsidized the best intellect 
and talent in every department of life. When in- 
tellect becomes thoroughly moral, then it will ad- 
dress itself to the elevation of the weakest and the 
lowliest. Ilenry George is seconded in his state- 
ment that "the true Republic is not yet born," by 
Col. B. S. Heath, who said: 

"The revolution of '16 is not yet completed, the Re- 
public 13 not yet born. The efforts of our fathers, like 
those of too many of the present day, were for reform, 
simply. They appealed for redress of grievances. 
The blood that flowed at Concord and Bunkerhill was 
not for liberty and independence, but for temporary re- 
lief. The war of the Revolution was not, at first, waged 
against the system of monarchy, but against the sever- 
ity of the monarch." 

These men are both right ; we have, as yet, no 
Republic, our lack in that direction is partly de- 
picted by Dr. Shellhouse, as follows: 

"This government is not a Republic; it is a govern- 



HAVE WE A REPUBLIC? i± 

ment of landlords and tenants, of millionaires and 
paupers, of masters and slaves. It is a government of 
golden splendor, of pomp and display, and of misera- 
ble obscurity; of purple and fine linen, and debasing 
rags; of crime and misery in high places, and of mis- 
ery and crime in low places; with prisons filled and 
lunatic asylums overflowing; crime, insanity and sui- 
cide increasing, drunkenness and debauchery sapping 
the foundation of moral purity, and threatening the 
overthrow of society and domestic institutions; — these 
are the results of inordinate wealth in the hands of a 
few.' 

This is enough, at present, on this subject. The 
evils spoken of in the above quotations must be 
remedied or the American eagle must fold her 
wings and die. The question now presents itself: 
How will these evils be remedied? I answer, the 
first element of this remedy must be in a proper 
education of the people. "Without education — par- 
ticularly in certain directions — the people nerer 
can sustain a democratic Republic. Every child 
born in the country should be educated as to the 
meaning of our institutions; they should be so 
educated that they would be qualified to fill any po- 
sition they may be called to act in, from constable 
up to president. 

For this, a thorough business education, and a 
political education is necessary, but a religious edu- 
cation is unnecessary. An individual could be a 
member of any church, or of no church, and per- 
form all his duties toward his fellow citizens, as a 
citizen, or as an officer in this government. The 



72 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

children are born for the State, to fill any position 
in the State to which they may be called. It is, 
therefore, plainly the State's duty to qualify them for 
what may be expected of them. If parents wish 
their children educated in any particular depart- 
ment of religion, they have a right, at their own 
private expense, to give them that education. No 
one has a right, however, to compel another to send 
his children to a sectarian school, or even to listen 
to prayers or the reading of Bibles or Koran s in 
our common public schools. The State and the 
Church must, for the good of both, be kept entirely 
separated. 

Our government is a compact for self-protection 
— a necessary evil. It is in no sense an association 
for the promulgation or the furtherance of any re- 
ligious sentiment. 

I would, therefore, urge that every citizen of 
this government must have a plain common school 
business education, and then that they must have 
an opportunity to be educated on every act of our 
National and State Legislatures, and every political 
movement in this country. I, therefore, repeat the 
plea which I have been making for almost a genera- 
tion, that, by some means a record of all that is 
done by States or by the federal government should 
be put into tho hands of every voter in the land. 

This could be done by no other means so well as 



HAVE WE A REPUBLIC \ 73 

by compelling every post-office in the United States, 
to keep on file, and for examination, a complete 
record of everj word that is said and of every vote 
that is taken in Congress. 

o 

As matters are to-day, the common people know 
very little of what their representatives are doing. 
Newspapers cannot always get the truth, if they 
would, and many of them would not, if they could. 
Postmasters have often suppressed the very news 
which should have been carried to every voter in 
America, I am old enough to remember when 
postmasters in the South suppressed the New York 
Tribune, Those suppressed papers probably con- 
tained the very things the people of the South 
most needed to know — the things which might 
have prevented them from rushing hot-headedly 
into a mad rebellion, the effects of which placed 
the hand of progress for the South nearly a century 
back on the dial plate of time. 

As matters have been, government has assisted 
both the North and the South to a misunderstand- 
ing of each other. When Col. Hayne, of South 
Carolina, and Daniel "Webster, of Massachusetts, 
had their famous debate, each man's speeches, un- 
der his frank, went to his constituency. The 
speeches of neither man reached the other senator's 
constituents ; thus, the South Carolina senator could 
misrepresent New England and the entire North 



74 YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

in his speech; the Southerners got their lessons of 
the North from their honorable senator. On the 
other hand, the North which did not get Hayne's 
speech, got representations of it through Webster's 
reply; thus, the North did not get its lessons eith- 
er direct or correct. The result was, the differ- 
ences went on, each party knowing really only one 
side of the matter until it culminated in the war 
which cost both the North and the South so much 
blood and treasure. 

Now, had Col. Hayne known that his speech 
would be forced into every post-office in the North, 
for the inspection of every citizen, would he have 
made it? Probably he would, but its tone would 
have been vastly different from what it was. "Web- 
ster, also, would have known his reply was to be 
read by every man and woman in the South who 
cared to read, and thus he would have said some- 
things he did not say, and have left out many things 
he did say. 

This is true of every debate that comes up in 
Congress. Every congressman would know that 
people could not be deceived about his speeches, 
votes and drunks. The result would be that many 
of them would conduct themselves differently from 
what they now do. Thus, at a very small cost, the 
nation would be educated to know its wants and 
what it is getting. Every time a congressman of- 



HAVE WE A REPUBLIC? 75 

fered them stones for bread, they would know it; the 
result would be, instead of our public servants de- 
ceiving us, and riding booted and spurred over the 
people to wealth and power, the people would elect 
all such men to stay at home. 

I would urge as the next consideration to brino- 
about a genuine Republic, the abolition of the ap- 
pointing power. I urge that first, because that is 
Republicanism. Why should I, a Republican, be 
compelled to send to Washington and ask a strang- 
er there if he will permit my neighbor, Brown, 
Jones or Smith to handle my mail ? Why have I 
not as good a right to help elect my postmaster as 
to assist in electing the village constable? If it is 
Republicanism for our president or our member of 
Congress to appoint our postmaster, why is it not 
Republicanism for him to appoint our school-board, 
the mayor of our village or our road supervisor? 
Where is the necessity of going through the farces 
of elections if we must submit to have some politi- 
cal tool put in over us to handle our mail? If it is 
not republican to allow a potentate or autocrat in 
Washington to appoint all of our officers, why is 
it republican for him to appoint any of them ? 

The evils of the appointing power are too numer- 
ous to be even hinted at here. The eloquent Free- 
man O. Willey, in his "Whither are we Drifting?" 
has the following language: 



76 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

' ; Is more argument needed to prove the s:reat wrong- 
fulness, danger and despotism of the appointing sys- 
tem? It gives the partizan and politician power to 
reward his friends for dirty work, in political cam- 
paigns, from the public treasury. It gave General 
Grant an opportunity to appoint partizan friends and 
relatives to office, even down to tie remotest cousin, 
and induced him to make a desperate attempt to vio- 
late a time-honored custom, that he might make A. T. 
Stewart (who had given Lim a house at Long Branch,) 
Secretary of the American Treasury. It gave Ruther- 
ford B. Hayes, an opportunity to bribe men to count 
him into the presidential chair, with a promise of an 
office, as a reward for the dastardly deed. If it be 
urged that Grant and Hayes did not appoint men to 
office from unworthy motives, it is enough to say that 
the appointing system gave them the opportunity to 
do so. It is charged against them, and truth com- 
pells me to add, that many a man has been hung on 
testimony less positive than that which their accusers 
have produced, to sustain the charge. The fact that 
the appointing system giyes the president the power 
to appoint unworthy partizans to office, and to set bad 
men to rule over the people without their consent, is 
enough to condemn it in a free government. Indeed 
the government is not free where such a system exists." 

Next, I insist that before the genuine Republic 
can come, the veto power must be taken from the 
president. To the people, in Republics, should be 
the iinal appeal. Before our government was for- 
mulated a great writer said: 

"Congress must not be permitted to make laws; only 
to propose, and the peDple to ratify them." 

In the next chapter the remedy for some of the 
evils spoken of in this chapter will be proposed. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WHERE IS THE REMEDY? 

NO USE FOR A PRESIDENT. — THE RUSSIAN BEAR.— OTHER GOV- 
ERNMENT BEARS. — VETO POWER SHOULD BE WITH THE 
PEOPLE. — COST TO THE PEOPLE OF THE PRESIDENT. — THE 
LOBBY AND THE PRESIDENT. — THE EFFECT. — EFFECT ON 
CONGRESS OF PUTTING THE VETO POWER IN THE HANDS 
OF THE PEOPLE. — EFFECT ON THE PEOPLE. — A SAMPLE 
CASE. — A SOLDIER'S THOUGHT. — MR. SHELLHOUSE's STATE- 
MENT. — THE FOURTEENTH DEMAND OF THE K. OF L. — 
GOVERNMENT LOANS. — THE POWER OF CONGRESS. — TO 
WHOM SHALL IT BE DELEGATED. — RESULT OF CONGRESS 
DOING ITS DUTY. 

The remedies for the evils spoken of in our so- 
called Republic may not all be stated in this book, 
but as I have already hinted at some of them I will 
mention a few more of the remedies here. 

I said, "the veto power must be taken from the 
president of the United States," I now say we have 
no use for such a superfluity as a president. 

It is said the time was when the Russian gov- 
ernment kept a live bear, at the government's ex- 
pense, and many thought the government could 
not exist without a bear; it always had a young 
bear in training so that if any tiling should happen to 
the government bear his place could be supplied im- 

77 



78 YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

mediately. Once upon a time the old government 
bear froze to death; the weather was such that it 
was several days before his place could be supplied; 
it was noticed that the wheels of government moved 
on j ust the same, the bear had been an expense but 
of no actual service to the government; the gov- 
ernment bear was abolished, since which time the 
government has got along better than ever before. 
If some of the other useless government clogs, called 
officers, could be frozen out the government would 
be the gainer in the operation. 

Now it costs more to make a president every 
four years, and to keep him than it would cost to 
keep ten thousand bears and he is of no more use 
to the government than a bear would be in his place. 

We have argued that the appointing power should 
be taken from the president — that every officer 
should be elected by the people; now, if Thomas 
Paine was right when he said: "Congress must 
not be permitted to make laws; only to propose 
them, and the people [not the president,] to ratify 
them? then there will be little left for the presi- 
dent to do — in fact, nothing that cannot as well be 
done by a congressional committee. 

Our president is an expensive bear. His salary 
of fifty thousand dollars a year and mansion and 
furniture found him, enough to pay the wages of 
a hundred honest, intelligent and hard working 



WHEKE IS THE REMEDY? 79 

laborers, is tlie smallest part of the cost to the peo- 
ple of a president. A million of dollars in money 
and two more millions in time spent will not cover 
the expense of saying who shall be our president 
the next four years. This useless expenditure of 
money would go a great way toward relieving the 
distress in this country. 

When the office of president is gone there will 
be little room for the third house of Congress, 
known as the lobby, to get in its mischief. The 
lobbiest had always much rather bulldoze one 
man than a whole Congress. To illustrate, see 
how the lobby of bankers, killed the "Legal Tender 
Act," so as to make a law intended for the benefit 
of the people in the time of the war, the most op- 
pressive measure ever enacted in this country. See 
how another lobby of bankers convened in Phila- 
delphia, and got General Grant there, once upon a 
time and made him veto a law wdiich he himself 
had asked Congress to pass — a law restoring to the 
people the money illegally taken from them, thus 
bringing bankruptcy to nearly a whole nation. 
The influence of the lobby owned the president in 
that one case, and the influence of the bankers over 
Rutherford B. Hayes during his assumption of an 
office to which he was not elected, has cost the 
people of this country more than the war. 

I submit that the office of president costs the 



80 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

country entirely too much; it is too great a lever 
for evil, to be put into any one man's hands and 
there is too little good to be derived from it; let us 
cut it down as a cumberer of the ground. 

When the office of the president is abolished and 
the veto power is put into the hands of the people, 
where it belongs, our congressmen, being responsi- 
ble to the people and having to answer directly to 
them will be put in a wholesome fear of the peo- 
ple, which will cause them to consult the wants of 
the people as they never have before. 

Not only this, but the effect can but be good 
for the people. They will feel, and act upon their 
responsibility. The study of political economy will 
be a necessity. People will be compelled to take 
an interest in political matters in order to know 
how to act intelligently on every recommendation 
of Congress which will be handed back to them 
for the final passage. The Congressional Kecord be- 
ing kept in every post-office, people will go there 
and post themselves on every movement in which 
they are interested. People will feel they have 
more interest in the government and will become 
more active in republicanism than ever before. 

Many of the bad laws passed by Congress and 
signed by the president would never, under such 
circumstances, have become laws. 

Let me give a sample case. It is very small, I 



WHERE IS THE REMEDY? 81 

acknowledge, but it serves to illustrate hundreds of 
similar cases. After President Garfield died Con- 
gress passed a bill pensioning his widow five thou- 
sand dollars per annum, during her life. That is a 
very small affair I know; it does not cost the reader 
or writer of this probably more than one cent per 
annum, but as small as it is there is a principle in- 
volved which a soldier brings out as follows : 

"I am following the cultivator in small corn, and no 
very flattering prospects of a crop; I get, very naturally, 
to contrasting my condition witn that of some other 
people, and wonder how my wife would f ?el if I should 
be taken away — then I could not but think of Mrs. Gar- 
field. A New York paper, speaking of Mrs. Garfield, 
says: 

"She has $300,000 in government bonds, the result of a subscription ; 
her husband's life was insured for $50,000, which she promptly re- 
ceived. She also received the president's salary for the unoccupied 
first year; amounting to about $20,000; then add to that $30,000, the 
value of Garfield's estate; that makes $400,000. Now the income 
from this sum will not be far from $16,000 a year. Most people would 
think that a comfortable income." 

Now, you men that labor, take heed. After having all 
the doctor's bills paid, this woman is given a pension 
of $5,000 a year which- is $13.79 every day in the year. 
Now, you men that plow and grub for 75 cents to $1.00 
per day, study over this matter." 

Many other instances as impressive as the above 
could be given. The bill to fasten the National 
Banks on ns for twenty years more, signed by Mr. 
Ilayes, never could have become a law, had it been 
submitted to a properly enlightened public. The 
re-chartering the National Banks will, during the 



82 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

twenty years that their charters run, cost the nation 
more than did the four years' war. 

The argument on the expensive and useless lux- 
ury of a president is summed up by Mr. Shellhouse 
as follows: 

"The vast powers conferred by the Constitution upon 
the president has made that office the object of the most 
zealous and determined pursuit, and the great parties 
have become mere factions, organized for the sole pur- 
pose of profit, power and prestige; and have lost sight 
of the people's interest altogether. In view of these 
facts, how foolish and short-sighted it is to be carried 
away by party spirit, to train under the whip of some 
leader, for the sole purpose of elevating him to power." 

When the office of president is abolished and the 
people take into their hands the power now dele- 
gated to a president, they would soon see many of 
the monopolies, now the pet of the government, 
hurled from their throne. Instead of re-chartering 
National Banks, something similar to the fortieth 
demand of the Knights of Labor would be framed 
into law. The demand reads as follows: 

"The establishment of a National Monetary System, 
in which the circulating medium, in necessary quantity, 
shall issue directly to the people, without the interven- 
tion of the banks; that all the national issue phall be 
full legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and 
private, and that the government shall not recognize 
any private banks or create any banking corporations." 

"With this proposition framed into law, and an- 
other one, that money shall be loaned by the gov- 
eminent directly to the people, on ample security 



WHERE IS THE REMEDY? 83 

at a rate of interest, not exceeding two per cent., 
we will be well on the road to a permanent cure of 
many of the evils spoken of in former chapters. 

To effect this demand of the Knights of Labor, 
nothing is needed but to carry out an article in our 
Constitution as it is: 

"Congress shall have power to coin money and regu- 
late the value thereof." 

Why should Congress and the president have 
united to delegate that power to a corporation ; and 
if Congress passes a law and the president signs it, 
delegating one of its prerogatives away, why not 
delegate all its other powers away, and quit busi- 
ness? 

Among tlie other powers of Congress, is that of 
establishing post-offices and post-roads; why not 
give that power to another body of equally as hon- 
orable gentlemen, known as star route thieves? Its 
power to "declare war," could be delegated to the 
gunsmiths and pow T der makers; they know as much 
more about war and when we are ready for it, than 
the average congressman, as the banker knows 
about money more than he does. 

Let Congress do its duty, and let the demand of 
the Knights of Labor be carried out; let another 
law be passed loaning the people money as cheaply 
as it is now furnished to rich banking corporations 
and the millennium will be here. 



84 TOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

Capitalists will not compete with the government 
in loaning money at a low rate of interest, the re- 
sult will be their money will be invested in pro- 
ductive enterprises; labor will be employed, we will 
no longer with our hills and valleys full of timber 
and our country full of idle workingmen, import 
our clothes-pins from China. Our silks will no 
longer come from France, our knives from Sheffield, 
or our shawls from India. Under these conditions 
our roads can all be macadamized, our wharfs built 
as they should be, and h'ne public buildings could 
adorn every city in the land. We have labor enough 
to do this, and much more, and were we not giving 
the wealth of the country to corporations, would 
have enough, and to spare. A wise man said: 

"He that giveth to the rich shall surely come to want." 
— Prov. xxii:16. 

"Shall the demon reign eternal 
O'er this blessed land fraternal? 
Shall enchantment so infernal hold us ever 'neath its 
spell? 

No! by all the rowers of heaven, 
From this land he shall be driven. 

Usury be hurled unshriven, 
To the lowest depths of hell! 
Then a mighty shout be given, 
Hear the hosts their voices swell, 
Labor conquersl — all is well I" 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE SENATE? 

OUR SENATE NOT A REPUBLICAN INSTITUTION. — THE "CHECK" 
ARGUMENT ANSWERED. — ^RIGHTS OF MAN," OBJECTIONS. 
— THE LEGAL TENDER ACT.— OF WHOM IS THE SENATE 
COMPOSED 1 ? — THE CALIFORNIA SENATE. — GOOD BILLS PIG- 
EON-HOLED IN THE SENATE. — TENANT FARMERS THE RE- 
SULT. — OUR SPHINX QUESTION. 

The United States Senate is not a Republican in- 
stitution and does not belong to a Republican form 
of government. It is not elected by the people — 
is not of the people or for the people. It is simply 
an American House of Lords foisted on the govern- 
ment at an immense expense, for the benefit of mo- 
nopolies. The people have no use for any law-mak- 
ing power they did not themselves create. Thus 
far our Senate has existed only to put the brakes 
on what would have been wise legislation. I know 
the argument is made that two Houses are more apt 
to legislate wisely than one; that the Senate can 
put a check on bad legislation. The difficulty is, 
the check is liable to be thrown in at the wrong 
place. 

Thomas Paine said, in his "Rights of Man:" 

85 



86 TOUR AKSWER OR TOUR LIEE. 

"The objection against two Houses are, first, that 
there is an inconsistency in any part of a whole Legis- 
lature coming to a fiDal determination by a vote on any 
matter, whilst that matter with respect to the whole, is 
only in train of deliberation, and consequently open to 
new illustrations. Second, that, by taking the vote of 
each as a seperate body, it always admits of the possi- 
bility, and is often the case, in practice, that the minor- 
ity governs the majority, and that, in some instances, to 
a great degree of inconsistency. Third, two Houses 
arbitrarily checking each other is inconsistent, because 
it cannot be proved, on the principles of just represen- 
tation that either should be wiser or better than the 
other. They may check in the wrong, as well as in the 
right, and, therefore, to give them the power where we 
cannot give the wisdom to use it, nor be assured of its 
being rightly used, renders the hazzard, at least equal 
to the protection." 

I could refer to probably a hundred cases to prove 
that Mr. Paine was right. Take, for example, the 
Legal Tender Act, one of the best bills that ever 
passed the Lower House of Congress. When it 
went to the Senate, Thaddeus Stevens, said "it was 
loaded down with so many amendments its father 
could not recognize it." The original design of 
the whole bill was changed, and what was intended 
as a relief to the people, became one of the most 
oppressive laws ever passed. 

It is well known to-day, that the Senate is a body 
of monopolistic tools, most of whom have purchased 
their seat in the American House of Lords. Any 
mean move that monopolists wish to have sanc- 
tioned by law can get the aid of a majority of our 
United States Senators at anytime. The following 



WHAT SIIALL WE DO WITH OUR SENATE? 87 

extract from a California paper giving the status 
of its State Senate will apply to the House of 
Lords, holding its annual carousal in Washington. 

"Speaking generally, the Assembly did much better 
than the Senate. Its record on vital issues is good. 
Had all the bills passed by it become laws, the rights 
of the people would have been better protected. The 
Senate has been the theatre of manipulation and of 
evil practices. Useful and essential legislation has in 
several instances been stifled." 

That is the object of Senates everywhere. When 
the people's representatives pass good and whole- 
some laws the Senate generally makes it its busi- 
ness to "stifle" them. On this point, we could refer 
to a hundred instances in the United States Senate. 
Congress once passed a law that the lands given to 
railroads and forfeited by the companies by their 
non-compliance with the conditions on which it 
w r as given, should be restored and opened for set- 
tlement, but the Senate "stifled" the bill by pig- 
eon-holeing it. 

Had the people been the referendum in this in- 
stance there would not now be, as there are in Amer- 
ica, out of eight million farmers, one million one 
hundred and sixty-two thousand three hundred 
and seventy -three of them working on tenant farms 
— paying lines to rich landlords for the privilege 
of producing the necessaries of life. 

While this country is loaded with that anti-re- 
publican, and mischief -working institution, known 



88 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

as the United States Senate, we never can be a Re- 
public. Instead, we must be a government, in 
which landlords and the landless, millionaires and 
misery, palaces and paupers, extortioners and ex- 
treme degradation will rapidly and inevitably in- 
crease. Rascality in the name of law will sway its 
iron scepter over a plundered people. 

Our Sphinx is repeating the question: How can 
we redeem this country from rich robbers and de- 
liver it into the hands of the honest, toiling masses? 
Upon our answer depends our life. 



CIIAPTER X. 

OUR JUDICIARY SYSTEM. 

NO JUSTICE FOR THE POOR IN COURTS. — HENRY WARD BEECH- 
ER'S TESTIMONY. — JUSTICE HIDDEN BEHIND TECHNICALI- 
TIES. — EFFORTS TO KEEP TRUTH OUT OF COURTS. U SWEAR 

AS I TELL YOU." — DISTRICT ATTORNEY CORKHILL ON THE 
SITUATION. — WHERE ARE THE MISSIONARIES? — OUR JURY 
SYSTEM. — AN OLD LAWYER ON THE SITUATION. — DEMOR- 
ALIZING INFLUENCE OF LAWYERS AND COURTS. — COURTS 
ANTI- REPUBLICAN. — JOHN SWINTON ON THE LAWYER. — 
ARBITRATION. 

"Go look to yon judge in his dark flowing gown, 
With the scales wherein law weigheth quietly down, 
Where he frowns on the weak and smiles on the strong 
And punishes right, while he justifies wrong; 
Where jurors their lips on the Bible have laid; 
To render a verdict they've already made; 
Go there in the court-room and find, if you can, 
Any law for the cause of a moneyless man." 

No department of our so-called republican form 
of government needs making over more than our 
judiciary system. It is now absolutely out of the 
question for a poor man to get anything bordering 
on justice in any of our courts. In courts money 
moves everything as it does everywhere else. Henry 
Ward Beecher never preached a more truthful ser- 
mon than when he said: 

"All the frame-work of society seems to be dissolving. 

89 



90 TOUE ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

On every side we find men false to the most important 
trusts. Even judges on the bench are bought and sold 
like meat in the shambles. One must go into court 
with a long purse to obtain justice. The judiciary 
of New York stinks like Sodom and Gomorrah. * * 
** It is no longer an honor to sit on the bench, for, if 
the judge be an upright man his character will be con- 
taminated by the great majority of his associates." 

Think of a poor man obtaining justice in law- 
ing with rich corporations; the idea is preposter- 
ous! Courts are ordained to hide justice behind 
what is called technicalities. Anybody can under- 
stand justice but nobody can understand law as it 
is; and, when an attorney is employed, his business 
is to cover up, to meet technicality with technical- 
ity, to obscure and not to bring out facts individu- 
ally. I have kept away from courts as much as 
possible; but on a few occasions I have been sum- 
moned as a witness; I never went that I did not 
feel that I wanted to tell the whole truth about the 
matter; I wanted to see difficulties between neigh- 
bors adjusted with as little friction as possible; yet, 
if I ever succeeded in getting the truth before a 
court it was in spite of two paid sharpers who were 
there to prevent witnesses telling the truth. The 
first thing on the program is to swear a witness to 
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth. Then when he begins, one side or the other 
forbids his telling that, and lawyers and judges 
banter and quarrel until a modest witness is usu- 



OUR JUDICIAKT SYSTEM. 91 

ally so confounded that he hardly knows what he is 
^ying. 

"We once heard a lawyer privately telling a wit- 
ness what she must and what she must not swear. 
The witness said: "But the thing you wish me to 
swear is false." "That is no difference," said the 
attorney, "The gaining of our case depends upon 
your swearing as I tell you." She swore as she was 
instructed and the "scales of justice," were turned 
by her false oath. 

At the trial of the Creek murder case, in the city 
of Washington, District Attorney Corkhill said: 

""I cannot allow this case to pass without calling at- 
tention to the remarkable exhibition of want of char- 
acter of the witnesses, both for the government and 
the defense. In this case, and in the one tried a few 
weeks ago of a similar character, almost one hundred 
witnesses had been examined; and so muck perjury 
and utter disregard of the obligations of an oath I 
never saw in a court of justice. It suggested to me 
that those worthy and benevolent gentleman and ladies 
who are soliciting money and devoting their time to 
reforming the heathen, from Greenland to Africa, can 
find work closer horn?, here at their own Capital. If 
these one hundred p9ople represent the neighborhoods 
in which they live, under the very dome of this temple 
of justice, and within the sound of the church bells, 
there is a riaU ripa fjr harvest, as worthy the laborer; 
and as fully demanding his attention, a3 any to be 
found in the sands of Africa or on the shores of Abys- 
sinia." 

These liars may not have been made to lie by the 

attorneys, yet, with attorneys and judges opposed, it 

is hard to tell the truth. 



92 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

Our jury system is in one sense of the word as 
bad and anti-republican as it can be. Jurymen 
must either be knaves enough to swear themselves 
on the jury by swearing their incompetency for such 
a place, or they must swear themselves ninnies tak- 
ing no interest in matters of daily occurrence. 

Samuel Sinnett, an old and able lawyer of this 
State, exposes our judiciary system as follows: 

''There is no place where reform is more loudly 
ca'led for than in our courts of law. It is strange that 
in the latter part of the nineteenth century the demand 
for reform in courts has not been treated with that 
respect to which such a subject is entitled. But, in- 
stead of keeping up with the spirit of the age, and re- 
pealing old obsolete laws and rulings in our courts, 
we are piling up a pyramid of absurd and complicated, 
contradictory statutes, that are victimizing all those 
who seek justice in our courts. Fully four-fifths of 
the people are in favor of courts of arbitration (where 
no lawyers should be allowed to plead), where cases 
might be tried on their merits, and justice rendered 
without such feaiful costs and the torture of prolonged 
delay, and the rude and often insulting remarks of the 
cross-questioning of the counsel, who often treat wit- 
nesses as if they were ic the habit of perjury. 

Then our whole system is wrong. The idea of one 
man deciding a case where eleven are in favor of con- 
viction might have done very well in the days of John 
Calvin, but it is altogether out of place in the present 
age. Why not have a two-thirds majority render a 
verdict." 

"The Grand Jury is a relic of a past age, which, like 
the Electoral College and the Senate ought to be sent 
up to the garret with the rest of the lumber. But 
some will ask, "what should become of our lawyers?" 
They could not all be sent to Congress and the Legisla- 
ture; your system would simplify justice; and there 
would be but little chance for prolonged litigation! 
When were our laws honestly executed (bad as sOrue of 



OUR JUDICIARY SYSTEM. 93 



them are)? There would not be such cause for com- 
plaint; but we find our courts have become mere skin- 
ning establishments, where the flaying is continued as 
long as there is hide enough left to pay for the opera- 
tion. 

You can't give a simple note-of-hand any more with- 
out there is an iron-clad provision to pav a reasonable 
attorney's fee, (generally from $50 to $100, when $5.00 
would be ample pay for the service.) and then costs are 
all secured by provisions of the note. But worst of all 
is the iron-clad mortgage, with its coupons each and all 
claiming like fees and costs! I know of one firm that 
has loaned out five millions of Scotch Capital on mort- 
gages on farms (these money-lendfrs always prefer that 
class of property), the principal and interest coupons 
all to be repaid in gold at a certain Banking House in 
New York. What a fat thing this will be for the lawyers 
that collect them ! Now, this is always loaned on a valua- 
tion of one-third, so that there is a rich margin to fat- 
ten on. And yet those very farmers will vote for law- 
yers to represent them, expecting those men to make 
laws to protect the people from such a system of things. 
"What fools the lawyers are to neglect their own inter- 
ests! Now, the worst class of men to send to Congress 
and the Legislature to make laws, are, without excep- 
tion, lawyers, because they have no interest in common 
with their constituents, and will make the laws as mys- 
terious and contradictory as possible. 

It is generally believed, that judges are seated on the 
bench to administer justice agreeable to law, and in 
harmony with the Constitution, as it is generally con- 
ceded that no statute can be of force when it conflicts 
with the Constitution. I will here relate a little of my 
own experience in that respect. 

We had one of these legalized robbery schemes en- 
forced here, termed a five-percent, tax, to aid in build- 
ing a railroad, A number of the tax-payers refused to 
pay the tax, and sued out an injunction against the col- 
lector forbidding him selling our property. (Just im- 
agine: selling our homes out, to build a railroad to rob 
us!) Well, they sent for a certain judge from a neigh- 
boring county to come aud try the injunction suit. In 
rendering his decision, he made use of the following 



94 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

singular statement: That there was little doubt but 
that the law was unconstitutional. Private property 
shall not be taken for public purposes without just com- 
pensation (U. S. Court); but there was a decision by 
which ho would have to be governed, and he dissolved 
the in j u nction arid ordered our property to be sold. The 
judgo that had so just a respect for the decision of a 
court, and so little for the Constitution, has since been 
advanced to the Supreme Bench,where his decisions will 
become law for future aspiring pettifoggers. 

I will here state another case to show how justice is 
carried on in our courts. A certain young man com- 
mitted forgery for some trifling amount. The penalty 
was only three months in the penitentiary. He wanted 
to plead guilty, but certain limbs of the law saw a good 
chance for a hand, and persuaded him to stand a triai. 
"Well, he was indicted for the offense, and the State At- 
torney drew up sixteen different charges or counts in 
the indictment, for which he charged sixteen different 
fees against the county: and as the prisoner had no 
money to hire counsel, the judge appointed one of the 
bar to defend him, for which he was entitled to a $10.00 
fee, but he brought in a bill of $160.00, being $10.00 for 
each count in the indictment. That man is one cf the 
law-makers of Iowa, and the prosecuting attorney is be- 
fore i he people for election again, with a good prospect 
of success." 

It would seem that the above leaves little to be 
said, except to ask why this monster of iniquity is 
allowed to continue? As a means of justice it is 
universally pronounced a failure. The moral in- 
fluence of the courts of law is degrading. The abil- 
ity of the legal profession is not doubted, but the 
profession itself as it is conducted, is morally de" 
grading. Misrepresentation, cunning and chicanery 
are their tools of trade. Falsehood — sworn false- 
hood is not an uncommon weapon in the hands of the 



OUK JUDICIARY SYSTEM. VO 

attorney. This spirit of cunning passes from lawyer 
to client, and from the client to his honor until de- 
ception is generally the rule, not the exception. The 
influence of the legal profession in the affairs of 
State is almost omnipotent. Thus government is 
run, not in the interest of the "common people," but 
in the interest of immense corporations, who are 
the clients of these legal gentlemen. 

Our courts through and through are anti-repub- 
lican. Their dictation overrides all the rights of 
the people. A plain statement of truth is as apt as 
anyway to be "contempt" and subjects the witness 
to such fine as "his honor" may dictate. 

As for the average lawyer no man has painted 
him as he is, "wrinkles and all," as has John Swin- 
ton. The quotation is lengthy, but very interest- 
ing. Here it is : 

"Id the business of subverting the liberties of our be- 
loved country, I do not dread the soldier with his rifle, 
nor the conspirator with his mask, nor the fool, nor 
the fanatic, nor the demagogue, nor the king in his re- 
galia, nor the cleric with his tongue, nor the editor with 
his quill, nor Satan with his horns, nor yet the million- 
aire with his millions, if they have but a fair field. The 
man to be dreaded in this Republic is the shystering 
lawyer; legal machination is the thing of menace and 
danger. It is in this country especially, that the peo- 
ple need to be on the alert against legal quibblers; it is 
here they swarm, as they do nowhere else on the globe, 
not only in the courts, but in Legislatures and their 
lobbies, and every place of power and greatness. 

How ofteo, in searching amid the ruins of popular 
properties in other countries that once enjoyed them, 



UO YOUR ANSWER OR TOUR LIFE. 

do we como upon the tracks of the false lawyer! For 
what oppressor has he not found a legal subterfuge? 
For what deed of guilt has he not been ready to erect a 
legal bulwark? I)o we not find him with a legal defense 
of every usurpation of every usurper; with a legal jus- 
tification for aDy invasion of every birthright of man; 
with a legal quibble over every great popular franchise: 
with a legal glazo for every clear word of freedom; with 
legal pettifoggery against every establishment of right; 
with a legal weapon for nullifying every victory of pro- 
gi ess; with a legal jimmy, as Major Haggerty lately 
said in the Assembly, to pry open every man's safe; 
with a legal mechanism for tearing out every stone in 
the fabric of justice, and for rearing every pillar in the 
edifice of wrong? 

Not a guilty deed has ever been perpetuated by pow- 
er; not a base treason has ever been hatched against the 
commonwealth; not a device has ever been set for the 
subversion of any popular right — but the false lawyer 
has ntood ready to uphold it with the armament of false 
legality. He battered the Twelve Tables of Rome, he 
made of no effect the Ten Commandments of Moses, he 
stifled the genious of Magna Charta, and he is now 
scuttling the Constitution of the United States." 

In view of the above, and a thousand other facts, 
we demand that the people be delivered from the 
power of lawyers and the courts. Arbitration can 
always secure justice, and generally at one-tenth of 
the cost of time and money expended in the courts. 



CHAPTER XI. 

CONCLUSION. 

OBJECT OP WEITING.— HAVE WE A EIGHT TO SAVE OURSELVES? — 
THE RESULTS OF ATTEMPTING TO POINT OUT A BETTER 
WAY. — WHAT THE DECLARATION SAYS. — MONOPOLIES HAVE 
NO RIGHTS HERE. — TYRANNY NOT EASILY- CONQUERED. — 
NOW IS THE TIME TO WORK. — "WHAT CONSTITUTES A 
STATE ?" — AN IDEAL REPUBLIC. — IT MUST COME. 

In these feeble papers, written "on the fly," I have 
not pointed out all the dangers which threaten our 
Republic. My determination was to set the reader 
to thinking, not to go into an exhaustive argument 
on any point. As I look the matter over I acknowl- 
edge my heart grows sick. I ask the question again : 
Can we save ourselves? or has our journey hellward 
gained such momentum that it cannot be stopped? 
Our Sphinx is seriously propounding the question: 
How can w T e restore and save our civilization ? 

Another question is coming to the front; that 
is: Have we a right to remedy the evils already 
pointed out? Whoever dare attempt this, will be 
pointed out and possibly hanged as an anarchist. 
Capital and corporations will take every advantage 
of the public prejudice. A toadying public press 



98 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

will vilify and slander the one who stands up for 
the people's rights. The attorneys described in the 
last chapter will take large fees to make reform and 
reformers appear odious, and courts will decide 
against them, while they have no backing except 
the moral backing of being on the side of the right. 
That we have a right to remedy these evils there 
can be no doubt, the Declaration of Independence 
says: 

"That when any form of government becomes de- 
structive of these ends, [the rights endowed by the 
Creator, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] 
it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." 

If that is so, we have a right to remodel this 
government and make it what the fathers intended 
it should be, a republican form of government. 
Every day makes monopoly stronger; every day 
takes from him that hath not, and gives to him 
that hath. Shall we arise in the strength of a vir- 
tuous manhood and prove ourselves the worthy 
sons of those who, at the expense of their lives 
wrested our institutions from King George and his 
banditti. 

Monopolies have no more right to usurp the 
throne and ride rough shod over the people in this 
country, than King George had in 1776. The sa- 
credness of what is called "vested rights," is no 
more to be regarded than was the "divine right" 



CONCLUSION. 99 

of kings. The "vested" king is an usurper, as 
much so as was George III. In the Revolution of 
one hundred years ago, ministers with Wesley at 
their head plead for the right of kings to monopo- 
lize the freedom of this country; so in the new crisis 
which is now upon us we will find that "tyranny, 
like hell, is not easily conquered," but 

"They have rights who dare maintain them, 
Time makes ancient good uncouth." 

If our rights are to be secured, nay, if they are 
not to be taken from us, now is the time; the peo- 
ple should arise as one man and save the country 
from monopolistic sharks. Both Thomas Paine 
and Thomas Jefferson disputed the right of one 
generation to in any sense mortgage the next gen- 
eration. We have a right to repudiate the bad 
acts of our fathers; if this were not so progress 
would soon come to an end. 

The poet asks: 

"What constitutes a State? 

Men, high minded men. 
With powers as far above dull brutes endowed, 

In forest, brook or den. 
As beasts excel rocks and brambles rude; 

Men who their duties know, 
But knowing their rights, 

And knowing dare maintain; 
Prevent the long aimed blow, 

And crush the tyrant, 
While they rend the chain, — 

These constitute a State." 



1U0 YOUR ANSWER OR YOUR LIFE. 

I see an ideal Republic — a Republic of equal 
citizens, where there shall be no rich, no poor, no 
master, no servant, but where justice shall rule and 
man shall be to man a brother. 

"Aye, it must come! the Tyrant's throne 

Is crumbling with our hot tears rusted; 
The Sword earth's mighty have leant on, 

Is cankered, with our best blood crusted. 
Room! for men of Mind make way; 

Ye robber Rulers, pause no longer. 
Ye cannot stay the opening day; 

The world rolls on, the light grows stronger, 
The People's Advent's coming. 



C 219 89-* 



**0« 




W 



.0 



^ *W ^ "V *? 




**o« 
















» ^ 



4* • 



r. r ^o x 



♦J^L'* ^ a? ***** ^ v ^^^* ^ 






vv 




'% 









»°%. V 




'.♦ .*>' 







^/^•' «* 'q,.*'^*"^ 






5.V 
^ .•••- ^ 







^rv • 



*0* 











AT 




■^o< 






^.**v* -f \^ 



v <y 









o ^ * 



f.o v ..• 






r • j n 






i-v* 










h ^ 







rt^ tf* 



«- ^ v 




ill.'- \ ^ ♦<!&$?*•• * * . ^*- * *• 






^ 
^ 



V-0 






'0 













HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. |§| 

0k AUG 89 

N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 



\P <5 • 









